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SAMUEL PEPYS 

AND THE 

ROYAL NAVY 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

C. F. CLAY, Manager 

LONDON : FETTER LANE, E. C. 4 




NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

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» 



SAMUEL PEPYS 

AND THE 

ROYAL NAVY 

LEES KNOWLES LECTURES DELIVERED 
AT TRINITY COLLEGE IN CAMBRIDGE, 

6, 13, 20 and 27 NOVEMBER, 191 9 



BY 
J. R. TANNER, Litt.D. 

FELLOW OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE 



CAMBRIDGE 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1920 



PREFACE 

IN 1 91 9 the writer was appointed by the Master and 
Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, Lees Knowles 
Lecturer in Military and Naval History for the academical 
year 1919-20, and the lectures are now printed almost ex- 
actly in the form in which they were delivered in November, 
1919. 

The object of the Lecturer was to present in a convenient 
form the general conclusions about the administration of the 
Royal Navy from the Restoration to the Revolution arrived 
at in the introductory volume of his Catalogue of Pepysian 
Manuscripts, published by the Navy Records Society in 1903 
with a dedication, in the two hundredth year after his death, 
' to the memory of Samuel Pepys, a great public servant.' 
The evidence there collected shews that Pepys, familiar 
to the last generation in the sphere of literature, was also a 
leading figure in an entirely different world, who rendered 
inestimable services to naval administration in spite of the 
peculiar difficulties under which he worked. These conclu- 
, sions, with a part of the evidence on which they depend, are 
summarised in the present volume. 

Thanks are due to the Master and Fellows of Trinity 
College for encouraging the enterprise; to the Council of the 
Navy Records Society for permission to use the material 
already published k\ the Society's series; to the Delegates 
of the Oxford Clarendon Press for allowing the author to 
use and quote from his Introduction to the reprint of Pepys's 
Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88, issued in the Tudor 
and Stuart Library in 1906; and to Messrs Sidgwick and 
Jackson for a similar permission to use the Introduction to 
the section on ' Sea Manuscripts ' in Bibliotheca Pepysiana. 

J. R. T. 

February, 1920. 



k 



CONTENTS 

LECTURE PAGE 

I. INTRODUCTORY i 

II. ADMINISTRATION 18 

III. FINANCE 37 

IV. VICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; 

GUNS 57 

INDEX 80 



4 



LECTURE I 

INTRODUCTORY 

The materials for the administrative history of the Royal 
Navy from the Restoration to the Revolution are largely 
contributed by Cambridge. 

The section of the Pepysian Library at Magdalene which 
Samuel Pepys classified as ' Sea Manuscripts ' contains 1 14 
volumes, the contents of which cover a wide field of naval 
history. Pepys's leading motive in collecting these is pro- 
bably to be found in his projected ' History of the Navy.' 
Early in his career he thought of writing a ' History of the 
Dutch War,' 'it being a thing I much desire, and sorts 
mightily with my genius.' 1 Later on the design expanded 
into a complete naval history, upon which, at the time of his 
death, he was supposed to have been engaged for many 
years. Evelyn writes in his Diary on 26 May, 1703: 'This 
day died Mr Samuel Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and 
curious person, none in England exceeding him in know- 
ledge of the navy.... He had for divers years under his hand 
the History of the Navy, or Navalia as he called it ; but how 
far advanced, and*what will follow of his, is left, I suppose, 
to his sister's son.' Pepys's correspondence with Evelyn and 
Sir William Dugdale suggests that it would have included 
in its scope the antiquities of the Navy and possibly the 
history of navigation, as well as administrative history ; and 
this view is supported by his selection of ' sea ' manuscripts 
for his Library. 

1 Diary, 13 June, 1664. 



2 SAMUEL PEPYS 

These manuscripts may be roughly classified in three 
groups : 

(i) Official documents of Pepys's own time, the presence 
of which in the Library may be explained by the predatory 
habits of retiring officials in his day. Among these are to 
be found collections of real importance for the administrative 
history of the navy during his time, such as (i) Naval and 
Admiralty Precedents from 1660 to 1688 — described as 'a 
collection of naval forms and other papers, serving for infor- 
mation and precedents in most of the principal occasions of 
the Admiralty and Navy calling for the same ' ; (2) Admir- 
alty Letters, 14 volumes containing the whole of the ordinary 
correspondence which passed out of Pepys's office during his 
two Secretaryships, 1673-1679 and 1684-1688 1 — the equiva- 
lent of the modern letter-copying books, but in those days 
transcribed afresh with laborious care by a staff of clerks ; 
(3) the Admiralty Journal, the minute-book of the Commis- 
sion of the Admiralty from 1674 to 1679 ; (4) Naval Minutes, 
a volume in which Pepys made miscellaneous memoranda, 
many of them notes for his projected History; and (5) the 
Navy White Book, in which he noted abuses in shorthand, 
and wrote down what he called 'matters for future reflection ' 
arising out of the Second Dutch War. 

(ii) A second group of papers consists of official and 
unofficial documents — many of them acquired or copied at 
some expense — brought together deliberately in order to 
serve as material for the projected ' History of the Navy.' 
These include (1) a copy of Sir William Monson's Naval 
Discourses ; (2) copious extracts from naval authorities and 
historians carefully indexed ; (3) Penn's Naval Collections, 
being ' a collection of several manuscripts, taken out of 

1 Vols, ii.-v. of these letters have been calendared already, and calendars of 
vols. vi. and vii. are in preparation : see the writers Catalogue of Pcpysian MSS. 
(Navy Records Society's Publications), vols. ii. and iii. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 3 

Sir William Penh's closet, relating to the affairs of the Navy ' ; 
(4) various volumes relating to shipbuilding and navigation, 
including the curious and valuable work entitled Fragments 
of Ancient Shipzvrightry and Sir Anthony Deane's Doctrine of 
Naval Architecture. This last contains delicate and elaborate 
drawings of a ship of each rate, and Evelyn records in his 
Diary under date 28 January, 1682, the remarkable impres- 
sion which a sight of it made upon him : ' Mr Pepys, late 
Secretary to the Admiralty, showed me a large folio con- 
taining the whole mechanic part and art of building royal 
ships and men-of-war, made by Sir Anthony Deane, being 
so accurate a piece from the very keel to the lead block, 
r igg m g> g uns > victualling, manning, and even to every indi- 
vidual pin and nail, in a method so astonishing and curious, 
with a draught, both geometrical and in perspective, and 
several sections, that I do not think the world can shew the 
like. I esteem this book as an extraordinary jewel.' There 
also falls into this group (5) the large and important collec- 
tion in eleven volumes entitled by Pepys A Miscellany of 
Matters Historical, Political, and Naval. This contains 
copies of 1438 documents, transcribed from various sources, 
and ranging from a complete copy in 1 14 folio pages of 
Sir Philip Meadows's work on the Sovereignty of the Seas 
down to ' A true Copy of the Great Turke his Stile which 
he most commonly writeth in His great Affaires.' They 
include documents relating to naval abuses; papers con- 
cerning salutes and the history of the flag, shipbuilding, 
victualling, and finance; a number of patents, commissions, 
and lists of ships ; transcripts from the Black Book of the 
Admiralty; and collections relating to the Shipwrights' 
Company and to the Corporation of Trinity House. 

(iii) The third group consists of books and papers which 
specially appealed to Pepys's characteristic curiosity, and 
have no direct bearing upon naval history. The line between 

1 — 2 



4 SAMUEL PEPYS 

this and the second group cannot, however, be sharply drawn, 
as few of the ' Sea Manuscripts ' are merely curious, and 
irrelevant to the history of the navy as Pepys himself inter- 
preted it. The contents of this group are not important for 
our present purpose, but one interesting fact may be noted. 
The inclusion in the Miscellanies of papers relating to 
Sir William Petty's calculations and experiments, and of a 
copy of 'A Discourse made by Sir Robert Southwell before 
the Royal Society, 8 April, 1675, touching Water,' suggests 
that Pepys's scientific interests were genuine, and were not 
due, as has been suggested, to a desire to commend himself 
to Charles II. 

It is fortunate for the student of naval administration 
during the Restoration period that the 'Sea Manuscripts' 
in the Pepysian Library include two 'Discourses' 1 upon 
naval abuses written at the beginning of the period, which 
enable us to understand some of the difficulties with which 
Pepys and his colleagues had to contend. The Second 
Discourse by John Hollond, in succession Paymaster, Com- 
missioner, and Surveyor of the Navy under the Common- 
wealth Government, following a First Discourse of 1638, 
is dated 1659 ; and the Discourse by Sir Robert Slyngesbie, 
a royalist naval commander, made Comptroller of the Navy 
on the King's return, is dated 1660. These give us the 
criticisms of a Parliamentarian of administrative experience 
and those of a royalist of experience at sea, made at the 
Restoration and supplying an excellent groundwork for the 
study of the period which followed it. 

There is no time to traverse the whole field of the Dis- 
courses, but certain points may be considered by way of 
illustration. 

1 See Hollond's Discourses of the Navy, ed. J. R. Tanner, published by the 
Navy Records Society in 1896. This volume also includes Slyngesbie's Dis- 
course of the Navy. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 5 

1. They bring into relief the remarkable durability of 
naval abuses. John Hollond was not the first writer to de- 
nounce abuses in the navy. This had been a fruitful topic 
for anonymous writers long before his day, and if the scat- 
tered papers on the subject were collected they would con- 
stitute a complete literature. The charges begin at least as 
early as the time of Hawkyns, and one writer 1 accuses him 
of what has always been regarded as one of the more modern 
refinements of cheating — the manufacture of a complete set 
of false books and vouchers for the purpose of baffling en- 
quiry. The Pepysian Library contains copies of a number of 
exposures ranging from 1587 to 161 1. The Reports of the 
Commissions of 1608 and 16 18, and in a lesser degree of 
that of 1626, are of special importance in the history of the 
evolution of fraud. Sir William Monson, who in 1635 
' turned physician ' and studied ' how to cure the malignant 
diseases of corruption ' that had ' crept in and infected his 
Majesty's whole navy,' 2 assigns some passages in his Naval 
Tracts to naval abuses; and in 1636 the Earl of Northum- 
berland, fresh from the experience of a naval command, 
denounces them in a state paper to the King in Council 3 . 
Hollond only develops in detail earlier themes, and Pepys, 
who thought very highly of his Discourses, ' they hitting the 
very diseases of the navy which we are troubled with now- 
a-days,' 4 takes up the same tale. And such is the tenacity 
of life exhibited by a well-established naval abuse, that a 
Parliamentary enquiry of 1783 6 into the Victualling Depart- 
ment at Portsmouth revealed malpractices of a kind very 

1 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, x. 273. 

2 Naval Tracts (ed. M. Oppenheim), iv. 143. 

3 See Appendix to Hollond's Discourses, pp. 361-406. 

4 Diary, 25 July, 1662. 

5 ' Interim Report of a Committee to inquire into abuses in the Victualling 
Department at Portsmouth' {House of Commons Miscellaneous Reports, vol. 
xxxvi. No. 55). 



6 SAMUEL PEPYS 

similar to those described by Hollond. The keys of the 
victualling storehouses had been entrusted to improper re- 
cipients, who had access to the stores at all hours ; certain 
persons kept hogs in the King's storehouses, which were 
' fed with the King's serviceable biscuit ' ; planks, spars, 
staves, and barrels were converted to private use ; ' mops and 
brooms ' from the store were appropriated by an official who 
'kept a shop and dealt in those articles'; the King's wine 
was drawn off in large quantities ' in bottles in a clandestine 
manner'; certificates were granted for stores before they 
were actually received, and for articles received short, these 
being signed in blank by the clerk of the check beforehand ; 
it was a 'common practice' to send in bags of bread de- 
ficient in weight ; the accounts were imperfectly kept, and 
showed enormous deficiencies of stores; by collusion with 
the contractor stores were accepted that were ' of improper 
quality and not according to contract'; and the victualling 
board paid excessive prices to a bread contractor with 
whom they were in collusion and refused to allow others to 
tender. 

2. Let me give you next a few illustrations of the kind 
of abuse which Hollond and his predecessors had pointed 
out, and with which Pepys and his colleagues had to deal. 

(a) Hollond, like Pepys, appears to have had a genuine 
sympathy for the sorrows of the ' poor seaman,' and he 
complains bitterly of the long delays in paying wages ; the 
' intolerable abuse to poor seamen in their wages ' by naval 
captains ' who are of late turned merchants, and have and 
do lay magazines of clothes,... tobacco, strong waters, and 
such like commodities into their ships upon pretence of re- 
lieving poor seamen in their wants, but indeed for no other 
reason than their private profit' 1 ; the practice of discharg- 
ing sick men without adequate funds to take them home ; 

1 discourses, p. 131. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 7 

and the payment of wages by tickets instead of cash, thus 
creating a depreciated paper currency. 

(b) Hollond also speaks strongly against the practice of 
using the State's labour in the gardens or grounds of officials, 
and the State's materials in repairing private houses or 
sumptuously decorating official residences, ' by painting, 
paving, and other ornamental tricking.' 1 Here he attacks a 
longstanding abuse, for a writer of 1 597 had already charged 
the Comptroller of the Navy with employing five labourers 
from the dockyard ' by the space of half a year ' at his house 
at Chatham ' about the making of a bowling alley and plant- 
ing of trees,' 2 and in 1603 Phineas Pett was accused of 
appropriating the King's timber ' to make a bridge into his 
meadow ' and to set up ' posts to hang clothes on in his 
garden,' and also labour for the same 3 . It is true that Pett's 
accuser is not above suspicion, for he begins his philippic 
with an artless exposition of his motives: ' In the last year 
of the Queen's reign, I, seeing some abuses by Phineas Pett, 
told him he had not done his duty. He strook me with his 
cudgel. I told him he had been better he had held his hand, 
for he should pay for it.' Pett was in some respects a calum- 
niated man, but this particular kind of peculation is more 
easily justified to the official conscience than any other, and 
there is nothing inherently improbable in the accusation. 

(c) The combination of captains and pursers to return 
false musters, or to present men to receive pay who never 
served, was another longstanding abuse. There was in the 
navy a recognised system of drawing pay for non-existent 
persons to which no discredit attached, for it was the regular 
way of giving the officers extra pay. Thus the captains were 
allowed a ' dead pay ' apiece on the sea-books ' for their 

1 Discourses, p. 149. 

2 A Large and Severe Discourse, &c. (Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, x. 226). 

3 A Large and Particular Complaint against Phineas Pett, &c. (Pepysian 
MSS., Miscellanies, x. 257). 



8 SAMUEL PEPYS 

retinues '; and in harbour no less than four varieties of dead 
pay were recognised, including wages and victuals paid to 
men for keeping ships ' which long since had no being.' We 
also hear of an allowance demanded in the Narrow Seas 
' for a preacher and his man, though no such devotion be 
ever used on board.' The same principle appears in the 
1 8th century in connexion with what were known as 'widows' 
men.' The captain was authorised to enter one or two fic- 
titious persons in every hundred men of his ship's comple- 
ment, and the wages drawn in their names and the value 
of the victuals to which they would have been entitled were 
applied to the relief of the widows of officers and seamen 
who had served in the navy 1 . In the 16th and 17th centuries, 
however, the established principle was liable to a variety of 
fraudulent applications. A paper of 1603 gives a circum- 
stantial account of a case in which the companies of a 
squadron of four ships were mustered, and it was found that 
of 1250 men charged for, only 958 were actually serving, 
the King being ' abused in the pay of 292 men, which for 
four months, the least time of their employment,' was ^8oo 2 . 
The Report of the Commission of 1608 explains how this 
could happen, for ' the captains, being for the most part poor 
gentlemen, did mend their fortunes by combining with the 
pursers' 3 ; and Hollond, in his First Discourse, urges as a 
remedy ' an increase of means from the King ' for ' all 
subordinate ministers acting in the navy,' since 'for want 
thereof they are 'necessitated to one of these two particu- 
lars, either to live knaves or die beggars — and sometimes 
to both.' 4 

1 Discourses, p. 140//. 

2 An Account of Particular Abuses to be proved against the Officers of the 
Navy (Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, x. 271). 

8 C. N. Robinson, The British Fleet, p. 347. There are two copies of the 
Report of 1608 in the Pepysian Library — MSS. 2165, and Miscellanies, iii. 355. 
4 Discourses, p. 100. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 9 

(d) The danger of collusion among officials was one of 
the chief difficulties in the way of would-be reformers, and 
just as collusion between the captains and the pursers de- 
frauded the King in the matter of pay, so collusion between 
the victuallers and the pursers defrauded the King over the 
provision of victuals. Sir William Monson, in his Naval 
Tracts, gives instances of such collusion, and shews how 
easily it can be managed. Thus the victualler and the purser 
would contract between themselves for the purser to be 
allowed to victual a certain number of men on board each 
ship, paying the victualler for the privilege but making 
his own profit on the victuals he supplied. 'Which,' says 
Monson, ' besides that it breeds a great inconvenience, for 
the purser's unreasonable griping the sailors of their victuals, 
and plucking it, as it were, out of their bellies, it makes 
them become weak, sick, and feeble, and then follows an 
infection and inability to do their labour, or else uproars, 
mutinies, and disorders ensue among the company.' 1 Even 
if the officers of the ship did their duty, it was sometimes 
the case that the higher authorities ashore intervened from 
corrupt motives. Monson tells us that when the. James was 
taking in victuals in Tilbury Hope, ' there appeared a certain 
proportion of beef and pork able with its scent to have 
poisoned the whole company, but by the carefulness of the 
quartermasters it was found unserviceable. Yet after it was 
refused by the said officers of the ship, and lay upon the 
hatches unstowed, some of the Officers of the Navy repaired 
aboard and, by their authority and great anger, forced it to 
be taken in for good victuals.... My observation to this point 
is that, though the Officers of the Navy have nothing to do 
with the victualling part, yet it is likely there is a combina- 
tion betwixt the one and the other, like to a mayor of a 
corporation, a baker, who for that year will favour the brewer 

1 Naval Tracts, iv. 147. 



io SAMUEL PEPYS 

that shall the next year do the like to his trade when he 
becomes mayor.' 1 Hollond's remedy for these abuses was to 
abolish the victualling contractor altogether, and for the 
State to take over the victualling by means of a victualling 
department 2 . This system of victualling ' upon account,' as 
it was called, was actually adopted from 1655 to the Restor- 
ation, and again after 1683; but the difficulties were not 
altogether met by the change, for the officials who victualled 
' upon account ' were liable to collusion with the vendors of 
victuals from whom they bought, and in this case the King's 
service suffered in a different way. 

(e) The administrative defects of the victualling recurred 
on almost as serious a scale in the department of stores, 
and great complaints are made, both by John Hollond 
and the earlier writers, of the bad quality of cordage and 
timber and of the frauds connected with their purveyance. 
Cordage would be entered by the storekeeper as heavier than 
it weighed ; old cordage would be sold at absurdly low prices 
to the minor officials of the dockyard ; and materials still fit 
for service would be condemned as unserviceable by an 
official who himself acted as a contractor for purchasing un- 
serviceable stores 3 . The inefficiency of the surveyorsof timber 
led them to purchase bad materials 4 , and their dishonesty 
provoked them to glut the King's stores with defective timber 
at exorbitant prices 5 in order to favour the monopolist or 
merchant with whom they were in profitable collusion. 

The worst and most corrupt period of naval administration 
was the reign of James I, and by the Restoration the navy 
was on a higher plane of efficiency and honesty ; but the 
criticisms of such writers as Hollond and Slyngesbie shew 

1 Naval Tracts, iv. 143. 2 Discourses, p. 154. 

3 Pepysian MSS., No. 2735, p. 65. 

4 Hollond, First Discourse {Discourses, p. 78). 5 lb. p. 67. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY n 

how much remained for the reformer to do. It is remarkable 
that the period of the later Stuarts, so deeply sunk in political 
corruption, produced a great naval organizer and reformer in 
the person of Samuel Pepys. 

There are 17 different ways of spelling the Diarist's name, 
but only three of pronouncing it. The descendants of his 
sister Paulina, now represented by the family of Pepys 
Cockerell, pronounce it Peeps ; this is also the established 
tradition at Magdalene, and is probably the way in which 
Samuel himself pronounced it. The branch of the Pepys 
family which is now represented by the Earl of Cottenham, 
pronounce their name Peppis. The British public calls it 
Peps, and this is the only pronunciation in favour of which 
there is no family or other tradition. An epigram contributed 
to the Graphic in November, 1891, not only comes to a 
wrong conclusion about the pronunciation, but is also full 
of misleading statements about the man: 

There are people, I'm told — some say there are heaps — 
Who speak of the talkative Samuel as Peeps ; 
And some, so precise and pedantic their step is, 
Who call the delightful old Diarist, Pepys ; 
But those I think right, and I follow their steps, 
Ever mention the garrulous gossip as Peps. 

But is he nothing more than ' the talkative Samuel,' ' the 
delightful old Diarist,' ' the garrulous gossip '? Even ' old ' is 
the wrong epithet unless it is restricted to historical anti- 
quity, for Pepys was not 27 when he began the Diary 1 , and 
only 36 when the partial failure of his eyesight compelled 
him, to his great regret, to give it up, ' which is almost as 
much as to see myself go into my grave.' 2 Yet he lived to 
be 70 years of age, and although for part of his career he 

1 On 1 January, 1660. 2 Diary, 31 May, 1669. 



12 SAMUEL PEPYS 

was out of office, he certainly became, what Monck had 
called him earlier with exaggerated compliment, 'the right 
hand of the navy.' 1 The maturity of his powers lies outside 
the period of the Diary, and it is his later life that makes 
good his claim to be regarded as one of the best public 
officials who ever served the State. In fact, Pepys's Diary is 
only a by-product of the life of Samuel Pepys. 

Nevertheless the Diary, in spite of its infinite accumula- 
tions of unimportant detail, and its conscientious record of 
small vices, shews us the great official in the making. Let 
me give two illustrations, one on the lower levels of the 
Diary and the other where it reaches its highest plane. 

30 May, 1660: 'All this morning making up my accounts, 
in which I counted that I had made myself now worth about 
£80, at which my heart was glad and blessed God.' 3 June, 
1660: 'At sermon in the morning; after dinner into my 
cabin to cast my accounts up, and find myself to be worth 
near ^100, for which I bless Almighty God, it being more 
than I hoped for so soon.' 5 September, 1660: 'In the 
evening, my wife being a little impatient, I went along with 
her to buy her a necklace of pearl, which will cost £4. 10s., 
which I am willing to comply with her in for her encourage- 
ment, and because I have lately got money, having now 
above ,£200 cash beforehand in the world. Home, and having 
in our way bought a rabbit and two little lobsters, my wife 
and I did sup late, and so to bed.' This methodical care in 
calculating ways and means and recording expenditure, 
when applied to the greater affairs of the navy, appears as 
a habit of method and order, and a remarkable instinct for 
business. Pepys introduced into a slipshod and rather 
chaotic organisation a high degree of system and method, 
and so vastly increased its efficiency in every direction. 

1 Diary, 24 April, 1665. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY i 



o 



My other illustration is from the account given in the 
Diary of the funeral of Sir Christopher Myngs, who had 
been mortally wounded in action on the last day of the great 
battle with the Dutch off the North Foreland, June 1-4, 
1666. Pepys was present at the funeral in a coach with 
Sir William Coventry, at which, he tells us 1 , ' there happened 
this extraordinary case — one of the most romantique that 
ever I heard of in my life, and could not have believed but 
that I did see it ; which was this : — About a dozen able, 
lusty, proper men come to the coach-side with tears in 
their eyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest begun 
and says to Sir W. Coventry, " We are here a dozen of us 
that have long known and loved and served our dead 
commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now done 
the last office of laying him in the ground. We would be 
glad we had any other to offer after him, and in revenge 
of him. All we have is our lives; if you will please to 
get his Royal Highness to give us a fireship among us 
all, here is a dozen of us, out of all which choose you one 
to be commander, and the rest of us, whoever he is, will 
serve him ; and, if possible, do that that shall show our 
memory of our dead commander, and our revenge." Sir W. 
Coventry was herewith much moved (as well as I, who could 
hardly abstain from weeping), and took their names, and so 
parted; telling me he would move his Royal Highness as 
in a thing very extraordinary, which was done.' No more 
touching tribute than this has ever been paid to the memory 
of a great seaman, nor better evidence given of the simple 
loyalty of sea-faring men which in their descendants has 
served us so well of late. ' The truth is,' continues Pepys, 
' Sir Christopher Mings was a very stout man, and a man 
of great parts, and most excellent tongue among ordinary 

1 Diary, 13 June, 1666. 



i 4 SAMUEL PEPYS 

men. ...He had brought his family into a way of being great; 
but dying at this time, his memory and name... will be quite 
forgot in a few months as if he had never been, nor any of 
his name be the better by it; he having not had time to will 
any estate, but is dead poor rather than rich.' A writer who 
could describe such a scene in a style which comes so near 
distinction, and could then reflect with dignity upon the 
swift passing of human greatness, is something more than 
a ' delightful old Diarist ' or a ' garrulous gossip ' ; but it is 
characteristic of Pepys that he should thus conclude his 
entry for the day: ' In my way home I called on a fisherman 
and bought three eeles, which cost me three shillings.' 

I have quoted this passage about the funeral of Sir Christo- 
pher Myngs for another reason — it enables us to understand 
how Pepys developed later on so impressive an official style. 
He takes pleasure in long, labyrinthine sentences, in which 
the thread of thought winds deviously through an infinity of 
dependent clauses, but the thread is never lost,and the reader 
always arrives in the end at the destined goal. He has a dis- 
criminating taste in the selection of words, always choosing 
the more impressive, and leaving the reader with the sense 
of something dignified moving before him, like a procession, 
but never sacrificing clearness and precision to mere sound. 
Yet associated with all this pomp is a sense of humour, 
usually full-flavoured, but on occasion as subtle and delicate 
as need be 1 , and finding its way even into the more dismal 
kinds of official correspondence. 

To illustrate the point of complexity, let me read you a 
letter to the Navy Board of 2 June, 1677, which I came 



1 See for instance a letter of 17 December, 1678, courteously discouraging a 
commander from sending his chaplain's sermon to the Bishop of London for 
his perusal, as owing to the pressing nature of his Parliamentary engagements 
the Bishop might not be ' at leisure to overlook it ' (Pepysian MSS., Admiralty 
Letters, viii. 432). 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 15 

across not long ago among the Pepysian papers 1 . It consists 
of a single colossal sentence, yet the meaning is perfectly 
clear. If you want a parallel, you should go to the Prayer 
Book, to the Exhortation which precedes the General Con- 
fession ; for this, although punctuated as three sentences, is 
structurally only one. 

There being a prospect (as you will know) of a considerable number 
of great ships to be built, and many applications being already, and 
more likely to be yet made to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admir- 
alty for employments by persons so far from having merited the same 
by any past service as to be wholly strangers to the business thereof, 
or at least have their qualifications for the same wholly unknown, nor 
have any title to his Majesty's favour therein more than their interest 
(which possibly they have bought too) in the persons they solicit by, 
And knowing that it is his Majesty's royal intentions, as well as for the 
benefit of his service, that the employments arising upon his ships be 
disposed to such as by their long and faithful services and experiences 
are best fitted for and deserve the same, I make it my desire to you 
that you will at your first convenience cause the list of the present 
standing officers of his Majesty's fleet, namely, pursers, boatswains, and 
carpenters, to be overlooked, and a collection thence made of such as 
by length of service, frequency and strictness of passing their accounts, 
together with their diligence and sobriety, you shall find most deserving 
to be advanced from lesser ships to bigger, transmitting the same to 
me in order to my laying it (as there shall be occasion) before his 
Majesty for the benefit of the persons you shall therein do right to and 
encouragement of others to imitate them in deserving well in his service, 
Towards the obtaining of which I shall by the grace of God endeavour 
constantly to do my part, as I doubt not you will also do yours, putting 
in execution the* Lord Admiral's instructions for informing yourselves 
well in the good and bad behaviour of these officers, and particularly 
by your enquiries after the same at pays, when by the presence of the 
ship's companies the same will most probably be understood. 

The reputation of Samuel Pepys has suffered in two ways. 
Readers of the Diary under-estimate him because they con- 

1 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, vi. 43. 



16 SAMUEL PEPYS 

ceive of him as a diarist only, and do not realize the serious- 
ness of his public responsibilities or the greatness of his 
official career. On the other hand, naval historians have 
often under-estimated him because they have failed to appre- 
ciate the difficulties with which he had to contend. If these 
difficulties are allowed for, the services rendered by Samuel 
Pepys to the navy are incomparable. He stood for a vigorous 
shipbuilding policy, for methodical organisation in every 
department, and for the restoration of a lost naval discipline. 
This was recognised by his immediate posterity, and in the 
century after his death a great tradition grew up about his 
name. A commission which reported in 1805 spoke of him 
as ' a man of extraordinary knowledge in all that related to 
the business ' of the navy, ' of great talents, and the most 
indefatigable industry.' The respect paid to his authority 
by the generation of naval administrators which succeeded 
his own— comparable only perhaps to the weight which 
Lord Chief Justice Coke had carried among the lawyers of 
an earlier time — led to a number of transcripts being made 
from the Pepysian manuscripts and preserved in the Ad- 
miralty Library for the guidance of his successors. And this 
tradition has to be reconciled with the other and widely 
different tradition associated with the Pepys of the Diary. 
It is not easy to realise that the two traditions belong to 
the same person. It is extraordinary that a man should 
have written the Diary, but it is much more extraordinary 
that the man who wrote the Diary should also have been 
' the right hand of the navy.' From the Diary we learn that 
Pepys was a musician, a dandy, a collector of books and 
prints, an observer of boundless curiosity, and, as a critic 
has pointed out, one who possessed an ' amazing zest for 
life.' From the Pepysian manuscripts we learn that he was 
a man of sound judgment, of orderly and methodical busi- 
ness habits, of great administrative capacity and energy; 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 17 

and that he possessed extraordinary shrewdness and tact in 
dealing with men. At certain points in the Diary we can 
see the great official maturing, but in the main the intimate 
self-revelation of a human being seems far removed from 
official life. It is the combination of qualities that is so 
astounding, and those who regard Pepys only as ' the most 
amusing and capable of our seventeenth century diarists ,J — 
a mere literary performer making sport for us — do little 
justice to a great career. 

1 Historical MSS. Commission, Fifteenth Report, Appendix, pt. ii. p. 153. 



T. 



LECTURE II 
ADMINISTRATION 

THE history of naval administration between the Restora- 
tion and the Revolution falls naturally into four periods : 
(i) 1660-73, from the appointment of the Duke of York to 
be Lord High Admiral, until his retirement after the passing 
of the Test Act; (2) 1673-79, the first Secretaryship of 
Samuel Pepys; (3) 1679-84, the period of administrative 
disorder which followed his resignation; and (4) 1684-88, 
from the return of the Duke of York to office until the 
Revolution — this period being also that of Pepys's second 
Secretaryship. 

At the date of the King's Restoration the direction of 
the navy was in the hands of an Admiralty Commission of 
twenty-eight, appointed by the restored Rump Parliament 
in December, 1659 1 , with a Navy Board of seven experts 
under it. One of the earlier acts of Charles II on his return 
was to dissolve these two bodies, and to revive the ancient 
form of navy government by a Lord High Admiral and 
four Principal Officers — the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the 
Surveyor, and the Clerk of the Acts. James, Duke of York, 
the King's brother, afterwards James II, was made Lord 
High Admiral — an appointment which realised the ideas of 
Monson, who had written earlier: ' The way to settle things is 
to appoint an Admiral, young, heroical, and of a great blood. 
His experience in sea affairs is not so much to be required 
at first as his sincerity, honour, and wisdom; for his daily 
practice in his Office, with conference of able and experienced 

1 A list of Lord High Admirals and Admiralty Commissions from August, 
1628, to March, 1689, is given in Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 211-26. 



SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY 19 

men, will quickly instruct him.' 1 All the Stuarts were in- 
terested in the sea. Nothing gave Charles II more pleasure 
than to sail down the Thames in one of his yachts to inspect 
his ships, and his brother possessed something like an ex- 
pert knowledge of naval affairs. Even Macaulay, who has 
scarcely a good word to say for him, allows that he would 
have made 'a respectable clerk in the dockyard at Chatham.' 2 
He was an authority on shipbuilding questions 3 , and Pepys, 
in a private minute not intended for publication and there- 
fore likely to express his real mind, ascribes much of the 
strength of the navy in his day to the Duke's energy in 
' getting ships to be begun to be built, in confidence that 
when they were begun they would not let them want finish- 
ing, who otherwise would never of themselves have spared 
money from lesser uses to begin to build.' 4 He was also by 
temperament stiff in discipline, and threw his influence 
strongly on the side of reform. The numerous references to 
him in the State Papers shew that while he was Lord High 
Admiral he bestowed a great deal of attention upon the 
duties of the office 5 . 

The new Treasurer of the Navy was Sir George Carteret, 
who, entering the service as a boy, had risen to high com- 
mand in the navy, and had served as Comptroller in the 
reign of Charles I. ' Besides his other parts of honesty and 

1 Naval Tracts, iv. 141. 

2 History oj England (2 vols. Longman, 1880), i. 218. 

3 Pepysian MS$., Admiralty Letters, xii. 71. We also find him desiring ' for 
his own satisfaction and use to have an account of the just rake of all the up- 
right-stemmed ships in his royal navy, and the present seat of the step of each 
main-mast ' (ib. xi. 200) ; and his pocket-book in the Pepysian Library (MSS. 
No. 488) contains a number of facts about the navy. For his interest in inven- 
tions see Admiralty Letters, xii. 91 and xiii. 23. 

4 Pepysian MSS. No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 175. 

5 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1667-8, p. xxxvi ; cf. also Diary, 8 July, 
1668 (' I to the Duke of York to attend him about the business of the Office; 
and find him mighty free to me, and how he is concerned to mend things in the 
Navy himself, and not leave it to other people '). 



2o SAMUEL PEPYS 

discretion,' says Clarendon, he was ' undoubtedly as good, if 
not the best, seaman in England,' 1 and Sir William Coventry, 
his consistent opponent, described him to Pepys as ' a man 
that do take the most pains, and gives himself the most to 
do business of any about the Court, without any desire of 
pleasure or divertisements.' 2 Pepys himself wrote of him 
not long before his fall : ' I do take ' him ' for a most honest 
man.' 3 

Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the new Comptroller, was himself 
the son of a Comptroller of the Navy, and had served as a 
sea-captain as early as 162,2,*, having been ' from his infancy 
bred up and employed in the navy.' 5 

Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, was only returning to 
an office which he had already held, for he had been Sur- 
veyor of the Navy from 1638 to 1642, and afterwards an 
active naval commander. Pepys began by borrowing ^40 of 
him 6 , and then came to dislike him. Their relations were 
not improved by the small social jealousies which broke out 
between their wives. Lady Batten complained to Pepys 
that ' there was not the neighbourliness between her ' and 
Mrs Pepys ' that was fit to be '; that Mrs Pepys spoke ' un- 
handsomely of her,' and her maid ' mocked her ' over the 
garden wall 7 . Soon after, Pepys records with some satisfac- 
tion that he and his wife managed to take precedence of 
Lady Batten in going out of church, ' which I believe will 
vex her.' 8 What the Diary calls a 'fray' eventually took 
place between the two ladies, and Lady Batten was ' mighty 
high upon it,' telling Mrs Pepys's ' boy ' that ' she would 
teach his mistress better manners, which my wife answered 

1 Dictionary of National Biography, ix. 208. 

3 Diary, 30 October, 1662. 3 lb. 12 April, 1667. 

4 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1631-3, p. 546. 

5 Slate Papers, Domestic, Charles 11, i. 153. 

6 Diary, 31 July, 1661. 

7 lb. 5 November, 1662. 8 lb. 28 December, 1662. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 21 

aloud that she might hear, that she could learn little man- 
ners of her." 1 Pepys came to the conclusion that his wife 
was to blame 2 . Sir William Batten, who does not deserve 
the treatment he meets with in the Diary, had at first 
done what he could to accommodate the quarrel, saying to 
Pepys that 'he desired the difference between our wives 
might not make a difference between us,' 3 but quarrels of 
this kind are the hardest of all to compose, and it is not to 
the Diary that Batten's biographer goes for his facts. Pepys 
calls him a knave 4 and a sot 6 , and accuses him of ' corruption 
and underhand dealing' 6 ; and in reviewing his own position 
on the last day of the year 1663, he writes: ' At the Office 
I am well, though envied to the devil by Sir William Batten, 
who hates me to death, but cannot hurt me. The rest either 
love me, or at least do not shew otherwise....' The news of 
Batten's last illness was, however, received with some sign 
of relenting. ' Word is brought me that he is so ill that it is 
believed he cannot live till to-morrow, which troubles me 
and my wife mightily, partly out of kindness, he being 
a good neighbour — and partly because of the money he 
owes me upon our bargain of the late prize.' 7 

The only one of the Principal Officers who knew nothing 
about the navy was the Clerk of the Acts, Samuel Pepys 
himself. He obtained the office by the influence of his 
patron, Edward Mountagu, the first Earl of Sandwich, a 
distinguished naval commander, who was first cousin to 
Pepys's father and recognised the claims of kinship after the 
fashion of his day. It was necessary first to buy out Thomas 
Barlow, who had been Clerk of the Acts under Charles I, and 
Pepys, observing that he was 'an old, consumptive man,' 8 

1 Diary, 10 March, 1663. 2 lb. 11 March, 1663. 

3 lb. 15 July, 1662. 4 lb. 5 July, 1664. 

6 lb. 23 May, 1664. 6 lb. 13 June, 1663. 

7 lb. 4 October, 1667. 8 lb. 17 July, 1660. 



22 SAMUEL PEPYS 

offered him £100 a year. He lived until 1665, and then a 
characteristic entry appears in the Diary. ' At noon home 
to dinner, and then to my office again, where Sir William 
Petty comes among other things to tell me that Mr Barlow 
is dead ; for which, God knows my heart, I could be as sorry 
as is possible for one to be for a stranger by whose death 
he gets ;£ioo per annum, he being a worthy, honest man; 
but after having considered that, when I come to consider 
the providence of God by this means unexpectedly to give 
me ^iooa year more in my estate, I have cause to bless 
God, and do it from the bottom of my heart.' 1 

Besides the four Principal Officers, the new Navy Board 
also included three extra Commissioners of the Navy, Lord 
Berkeley, Sir William Penn, and Peter Pett. Lord Berkeley 
was a distinguished soldier, who had won great honour at 
Stratton, and had served under Turenne from 1652 to 1655 2 . 
Sir William Penn was the son of a seaman and had been a 
seaman all his life. He had been rear-admiral and then 
vice-admiral in the time of the Long Parliament; he had 
served as vice-admiral under Blake, had commanded the 
expedition which seized Jamaica 3 , and had been a member 
of two Admiralty Commissions during the Interregnum 4 . 
Peter Pett came of a famous family of shipbuilders 5 — an 
earlier Pett had been master shipwright at Deptford in the 
reign of Edward VI 6 — and he had already served as resident 
Commissioner at Chatham for thirteen years 7 . Pett occupied 
a somewhat inferior position to his colleagues, as he was 
required still to reside at Chatham to take charge of the 
dockyard there — at this time the most important of the royal 

1 Diary, 9 February, 1665. 

2 Dictionary of National Biography, iv. 361-2. 3 lb. xliv. 308-9. 

4 The Commissions of 1653 and 1659 (Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 216, 
218, 219). 

5 Dictionary of National Biography, xlv. 103. 6 lb. xlv. 102. 
7 H. B. Wheatley, Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in, p. 285. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 23 

yards, described in the Admiralty Letters as ' the master- 
yard of all the rest.' 1 The other two Commissioners had no 
special duties assigned to them, and this was regarded as 
one of the advantages of the system now established, since 
they were ' not limited to any, and yet furnished with powers 
of acting and controlling every part, both of the particular 
and common duties of the Office'...' understanding the 
defects of the whole, and applying their assistance where it 
may be most useful.' 2 

It will be observed that on the Navy Board of the 
Restoration expert experience was overwhelmingly repre- 
sented. Of its seven members four were seamen; one a 
soldier — and it must be remembered that at this time the 
line between the two services was not distinctly drawn, for 
Blake had been a lieutenant-colonel and Monck commander- 
in-chief of an army before they were appointed to command 
fleets as ' generals-at-sea ' ; one represented experience of 
shipbuilding and dockyard administration ; and only the 
Clerk of the Acts knew nothing about the sea. Sir Walter 
Ralegh had remarked in his day: 'It were to be wished 
that the chief officers under the Lord Admiral... should be 
men of the best experience in sea-service,' and had com- 
plained that sometimes ' by the special favour of princes ' 
or ' the mediation of great men for the preferment of their 
servants,' or ' now and then by virtue of the purse,' persons 
' very raw and ignorant ' are ' very unworthily and unfitly 
nominated to those places.' 3 But such criticisms applied no 
longer. The King had made a good choice of fit persons 
duly qualified, and had established a naval administration 
which, if it failed, would not fail for lack of knowledge. 

1 x. 358. 

2 Report of the Navy Commissioners to the Duke of York, 17 April, 1669 ; 
printed in Charnock, Marine Architecture, ii. 406. 

3 Observations on the Navy and Sea Service ( Works, viii. 336). 



24 SAMUEL PEPYS 

There were a good many subsequent changes, but the 
importance of administration by experts was not again lost 
sight of. The office of Treasurer of the Navy soon fell to 
the men of accounts, and in 1667 Sir George Carteret was 
succeeded by the Earl of Anglesey, a ' laborious, skilful, 
cautious, moderate ' official, who had had seven years' ex- 
perience of finance as Vice-Treasurer and Receiver-General 
for Ireland 1 . But with this exception, if the post of a Prin- 
cipal Officer was vacated by a naval expert it was offered 
to a naval expert again. When Sir Robert Slyngesbie, the 
Comptroller, died in 1661 2 , he was succeeded by Sir John 
Mennes, who had served under Sir William Monson in the 
Narrow Seas, and had had a wide experience of the navy 3 . 
This appointment was not as successful as might have been 
expected. Pepys thought him ' most excellent pleasant com- 
pany ' 4 and 'a very good, harmless, honest gentleman,' 5 but 
he is always attacking his incapacity 6 , and refers to him on 
one occasion as a 'doating fool.' 7 On his death in 1671 the 
office passed to Sir Thomas Allin, originally a shipowner at 
Lowestoft, who had served under Prince Rupert, and had 
acquired a reputation in the Second Dutch War 8 . When 
Sir William Batten, the Surveyor, died in 1667, he was suc- 
ceeded byColonel Thomas Middleton,who had been resident 
Commissioner at Portsmouth 9 ; and when in 1672 Middleton 

1 Dictionary of National Biography, ii. 2-3. 

2 ' So home again, and in the evening news was brought that Sir R. Slingsby, 
our Comptroller, (who hath this day been sick a week) is dead ; which put me 
into so great trouble of mind that all the night I could not sleep, he being a 
man that loved me, and had many qualities that made me love him above all 
the Officers and Commissioners in the Navy' {Diary, 26 October, 1661). 

3 Dictionary of National Biography, xxxvii. 253-4. 

4 Diary, 2 January, 1666. 5 lb. 20 August, 1666. 

6 lb. 7 April, 1663; 5 October, 1663; 6 October, 1666; 4 January, 1669. 

7 lb. 2 April, 1664. 

8 Dictionary of National Biography, i. 332. 

9 Pepys joined with Penn in recommending him as ' a most honest and un- 
derstanding man, and fit for that place' {Diary, 5 October, 1667). 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 25 

was transferred to Chatham, John Tippetts, who had fol- 
lowed him at Portsmouth, was appointed to the Surveyor- 
ship 1 . It should be noticed that whereas during the thirteen 
years of naval history from 1660 to 1673 the office of Trea- 
surer of the Navy was held by four different persons, and the 
offices of Comptroller and Surveyor each by three, there was 
no change in the office of Clerk of the Acts. Pepys was 
the only one of the Principal Officers whose experience 
was continuous. 

The extra Commissionerships, when vacancies arose, did 
not all go to naval experts, but men of ability were selected 
for them, and sometimes men of distinction. When in 1662 
another extra Commissioner was appointed, the choice fell 
on William Coventry, a civilian; but Coventry had already 
had two years' experience of naval administration as Secre- 
tary to the Lord High Admiral, and his ability soon made 
him one of the most valuable members of the Navy Board. 
Burnet described him in 1665 as 'a man of great actions 
and eminent virtues ' ; Temple credits him with high political 
capacity; Evelyn calls him 'a wise and witty gentleman' 2 ; 
and the Diary shews how warmly Pepys was attached to 
him 3 . In 1664 an extra Commissionership was conferred 
on Lord Brouncker, a literary man, an intimate friend of 
Evelyn's, and the first President of the Royal Society, who 
took something more than an amateur's interest in shipbuild- 
ing, and in 1662 had built a yacht for the King 4 . Pepys could 
not make up his mind about him; for in 1667 he speaks of 
him as ' a rotten-hearted, false man as any else I know, even 
as Sir W. Penn himself, and therefore I must beware of him 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1672, p. 551. 

2 Dictionary of National Biography, xii. 363. 

3 E.g. 14 September, 1662 ('found him to admiration good and industrious, 
and I think my most true friend in all things that are fair ') ; 18 November, 1662 
(♦ I am still in love more and more with him for his real worth ') ; and elsewhere. 

4 Dictionary of National Biography, vi. 470. 



26 SAMUEL PEPYS 

accordingly, and I hope 1 shall,' 1 and in 1668 he regards 
him as the best man in the Navy Office 2 . One of the extra 
Commissioners, Sir Edward Seymour, was also Speaker of 
the House of Commons. 

The Navy Board was by tradition the Lord High Ad- 
miral's council of advice for that part of his office which 
was concerned with the government of the navy, and Monson 
alludes to its members as ' the conduit pipes to whom the 
Lord Admiral properly directs all his commands for his 
Majesty's service, and from whom it descends to all other 
inferior officers and ministers under them whatsoever.' 3 In 
practice the Board enjoyed very large administrative powers, 
for it was authorised ' to cause all ordinary businesses to be 
done according to the ancient and allowed practice of the 
Office, and extraordinary according to the warrants and 
directions from the Lord Admiral and the State' 4 ; but in 
theory it existed only in order to carry out the general in- 
structions which the Duke of York had issued early in 1662 5 , 
not long after he had taken office. These were drawn in 
comprehensive terms, and of necessity left a vast number of 
decisions on particular questions to be taken by the Board. 
These instructions of 1662 remained in force until the 
Admiralty was reorganised at the beginning of the 19th 
century". 

It is evident that the administration of the navy after the 
Restoration was in the hands of able and experienced men, 

1 Diary, 29 January, 1667. - lb. 25 August, 1668. 

3 Naval Tracts, iii. 398. 

4 Pepysian MSS. No. 261 1, Sir William Perm's Collections, p. 4. 

5 These were founded upon earlier instructions issued in 1640 by the Earl of 
Northumberland when Lord High Admiral. They were printed in 1717 from 
an imperfect copy under the title The CEconomy of ff.M.'s Navy Office, but 
there are two complete copies in the Pepysian Library, one among Naval 
Precedents (No. 2867, pp. 356-98) and the other in Sir William Penn's Collec- 
tions (No. 261 1, pp. 127-90). 

6 H. B. Wheatley, Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in, p. 138. 






AND THE ROYAL NAVY 27 

and that they were acting under instructions which were 
good enough to survive without material alteration for 
another century and a half. Yet there is abundant evidence 
in the Pepysian manuscripts and elsewhere to shew that 
naval administration during the period 1660-1673 was in 
the main a disastrous failure. The reason why the collapse 
was so complete was the pressure of the Second Dutch War 
upon the resources of the naval administration, but the 
essential causes lay deeper than external events. First and 
foremost undoubtedly stands the problem of finance. The 
want of money was the root of all evil in the Stuart navy. 
I propose to deal fully with this problem in my next lecture, 
and will only ask you to note its existence now. But there 
was more than this. On 15 August, 1666, Pepys made a re- 
markable entry in the Diary which I think gives the key to 
the situation : ' Thence walked over the Park with Sir W. 
Coventry, in our way talking of the unhappy state of our 
Office; and I took an opportunity to let him know, that 
though the backwardnesses of all our matters of the Office 
may be well imputed to the known want of money, yet per- 
haps there might be personal and particular failings.' He 
then notes Coventry's reply, which indicates the way in 
which personal failings were themselves affected by want of 
money. ' Nor, indeed, says he, is there room now-a-days to 
find fault with any particular man, while we are in this con- 
dition for money.' The whole service was breathing the 
miasmas exhaled by a corrupt Court. Slackness was fashion- 
able because the King was slack, and the higher naval 
administration had to contend with idleness and dishonesty 
in the lower ranks of the service due to a relaxation of the 
standards of public and private duty. In this conflict it was 
at a serious disadvantage, for it was impossible effectively to 
control subordinates whom there was no money to pay. The 
members of the Navy Board were capable and experienced, 



28 SAMUEL PEPYS 

and their intentions were excellent, but the atmosphere 
was poisonous and the situation beyond control. ' Per- 
sonal and particular failings ' in combination with financial 
disorder ruined the Navy Office, as they would have 
ruined any public department in any country and at any 
time. 

It would be idle to pretend that the Restoration officials 
conformed to modern standards of official purity; although 
they were very much better than the corrupt administrators 
of the reign of James I. Pepys is convicted on his own 
confession of a good deal that would be unthinkable to-day. 
During the period of the Diary his salary as Clerk of the 
Acts was .£350 a year; while in 1665 he was appointed 
Treasurer of the Tangier Commission, and from 1665 to 
1667 he was Surveyor-General of Victualling with an addi- 
tional^300 a year 1 . His salary as Secretary of the Admiralty 
was £500 a year, but he only enjoyed this for two periods 
amounting altogether to ten years. Yet as early as May, 
1667, he was worth £6goo 2 ; and in the end he retired on 
a competence, and was able to indulge the expensive tastes 
of the collector. It is" evident that his legitimate emoluments 
must have been supplemented in other ways. Readers of 
the Diary will remember that on 2 February, 1664, he re- 
ceived from Sir William Warren, the timber merchant, ' a 
pair of gloves ' for his wife ' wrapt up in paper,' which he 
'would not open, feeling it hard'; this phenomenon being 
due to the presence, presumably in the fingers, of ' forty 
pieces in good gold.' Warren gave him many other presents, 
and shewed himself 'a most useful and thankful man,' 3 
bringing him on one occasion ;£ioo ' in a bag,' which Pepys 
' joyfully ' carried home in a coach, Warren himself ' ex- 
pressly taking care that nobody might see this business 

1 Diary, 31 October, 1665. 2 lb. 31 May, 1667. 

3 lb. 6 February, 1665. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 



29 



done.' 1 On another occasion Captain Grove gave him money 
in a paper which Pepys did not open till he reached his 
office, taking the precaution of ' not looking into it till all 
the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the 
paper if ever I should be questioned about it.' 2 He appears 
to have profited largely by his transactions with Gauden, 
the Victualler of the Navy 3 ; with the Victuallers for Tan- 
gier 4 ; and with Captain Cocke, a contractor for hemp 5 . He 
also made profits out of flags 6 , prizes 7 , and Tangier freights 8 ; 
and the Diary records other gifts of money and plate 9 , in- 
cluding 'a noble silver warming-pan.' 10 On the other hand, 
the official letters, numbering thousands, conspire to produce 
by a series of delicate impressions the conviction in the 
mind of the reader that Pepys was immensely proud of the 
navy, and keenly anxious for its efficiency and success. His 
attitude is affected by his fundamental Puritanism, and in 
the Diary he is always trying to justify to himself the pre- 
sents which he accepted. He was glad to do the giver a 
good turn when he could, but it was with the proviso that 
it should be 'without wrong to the King's service.' 11 The 
inventor of such a phrase is on dangerous ground, but he is 
not yet utterly debased; and the high responsibility of his 
later life may very well have served as an antiseptic to arrest 
corruption before it had gone far. At any rate, this is as 

I Diary, 16 September, 1664. 2 lb. 3 April, 1663. 

3 lb. 21 July, 1664; 4 February, 1667; 2 August, 1667. 

4 lb. 16 July, 1664; 10 September, 1664 ; 16 March, 1665; 31 October, 1667; 
27 December, 1667. 

5 lb. 25 May, 27 June, 14 August, and 10 November, 1666. 

6 lb. 27 November, 1664; 28 January, 1665; 28 May, 1669. 

7 lb. 17 July, 1667; 14 August, 1667; 3 February, 1668. 

8 lb. 28 November, 1664; 9 December, 1664; 29 March, 1665. 

9 E.g. lb. 5 January, 2 May, 27 May, 3 June, 10 June, 22 June, 18 July, 
21 July, 1664; 21 March, 1665; 21 February, 1668; 24 February, 1668. 

10 lb. 1 January, 1669. 

II lb. 10 December, 1663. Cf. 5 January, 10 September, 24 September, and 
12 October, 1664, where the same mental attitude is indicated. 



3 o SAMUEL PEPYS 

much in advance of the cynical greed of the earlier adminis- 
trators as it is behind the contempt for all forms of corrup- 
tion which is natural to well-paid officials educated to 
modern standards. 

In 1673 the Test Act drove the Duke of York from 
office, and brought about other important changes in the 
administration of the navy. The King retained in his own 
hands the Lord High Admiral's patronage and also the 
Admiralty dues, which were to be collected for his ' only 
use and behoof; but the rest of his functions were placed 
in commission 1 . There were twelve Commissioners, of whom 
no less than five — the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, 
the Lord Privy Seal, and two Principal Secretaries — were 
great officers of State. Prince Rupert was at the head of 
the Commission, and Samuel Pepys was appointed Secre- 
tary, while the Duke of York, although no longer in office, 
remained, in spite of the Test Act, an important influence 
in naval affairs 2 . Pepys was succeeded in the office of Clerk 
of the Acts by his brother, John Pepys, and his clerk, Thomas 
Hayter, acting jointly. There were also changes in the com- 
position of the Navy Board, but these did not affect its 
character as a body of naval experts. 

The chief business of the new administrators was to bring 
to a close the Third Dutch War, and then to repair, by an 
energetic shipbuilding policy, that depreciation of the navy 
which was the natural result of the war. In this work they 
were on the whole successful. The Admiralty Commissioners 
were sensible and vigilant, and they were remarkably well 
served by their Secretary; while the Navy Board was strong 

1 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 221, and Calendar of State Papers, 
Domestic, 1673, p. 415. 

2 The Duke's presence ' behind the throne ' is confirmed by a number of 
references in the Admiralty Letters (e.g. ii. 60, 90; iii. 231, 234, 235, 301, 
3 J 9» 329. 33 1 )- 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 31 

on the technical side of its work, and fortunate in having as 
one of its members an official so thoroughly capable in his 
own department as the great shipbuilder, Sir Anthony 
Deane. Moreover, although the financial difficulty continued 
to hamper and cripple the navy, a vigorous shipbuilding 
policy was made possible by the better support which Par- 
liament now gave to naval expansion. The idea of the 
importance of sea power had already acquired a considerable 
hold upon the political classes, and the wars with the Dutch 
had served to strengthen it. Charles II had read rightly the 
feeling of his subjects when he allowed his Chancellor to say 
to the Pension Parliament in the speech which opened its 
eleventh session : ' There is not so lawful or commendable 
a jealousy in the world as an Englishman's of the growing- 
greatness of any Prince at sea.' 1 Thus the most important 
achievement of the period 1673-79 was the Act of 1677 — 
the 17th century equivalent of a modern Naval Defence 
Act — for the building of 30 new ships. Pepys, now a mem- 
ber of Parliament, made in support of it a comprehensive 
and vigorous speech 2 , and he modestly attributed the adop- 
tion of the scheme to the impression this produced upon 
the House. ' I doubt not,' he writes to the Navy Board, on 
23 February, 1677, 'but ere this you may have heard the 
issue of this morning's debates in the House of Commons 
touching the navy, wherein I thank God the account they 
received from me of the past and present state thereof, com- 
pared firs* with one another and then with the naval force 
of our neighbours as it now is, different from what it ever 

1 Cobbett, Parliamentary History, iv. 587. 

2 The substance of this speech is reported in Grey's Debates (iv. 115), but 
there is in the Pepysian Miscellanies (ii. 453) a copy of notes for this or some 
other speech, entitled ' Heads for a Discourse in Parliament upon the business 
of the Navy, Anno 1676,' which, though it differs from the report, does not do 
so more widely than what an orator actually says often differs from what he 
intended to say. An abstract is given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 48. 



32 SAMUEL PEPYS 

heretofore has been, was so received as that the debates 
arising therefrom terminated in a vote for the supplying his 
Majesty with a sum of money for building ships.... '* The 
rates and tonnage of the 30 new ships thus provided for are 
specified in the Act 2 . 

The new programme was pushed forward with the utmost 
energy, but before it was completed the control of the navy 
again changed hands. In 1679 the excitement of the Popish 
Plot drove the Duke of York from England, and Pepys was 
involved in his disgrace. He was accused of conspiring with 
Sir Anthony Deane to send information about the navy to 
the French Government and to extirpate the Protestant 
religion ; and was committed to the Tower on the Speaker's 
warrant 3 . His office at the Admiralty was, however, vacated 
by what was in form a voluntary resignation 4 . 

On the withdrawal of the Duke of York and the resigna- 
tion of Pepys, the higher administration of the navy passed 
to a new Admiralty Commission of seven, who claimed and 
enjoyed, in addition to the powers of the previous Commis- 
sion, those other prerogatives which the King had hitherto 
reserved to himself 5 . But although they had more power 
than their predecessors, they were much less competent to 
use it, for they were almost entirely without naval experience. 
Sir Henry Capel, the First Commissioner, had nothing to do 
with the navy until his appointment 6 . The same can be said 
of Daniel Finch, who, although he became famous afterwards 

1 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, v. 345. 

2 29 Car. II, c. 1. 

3 Dictionary of National Biography, xliv. 363. 

4 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, ix. 182. 

5 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, ii. 4x1. There are two copies of their com- 
mission in the Pepysian Library {Naval Precedents, p. 236, and Miscellanies, 
ii. 413). 

6 Dictionary of National Biography, ix. 17. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 33 

as Earl of Nottingham, was at this time only a young 
politician just beginning his official life 1 . Sir Thomas Lee's 
reputation was that of a parliamentary debater 2 ; and the 
other names are not notable. The Commission represents 
an intrusion of politicians into a sphere where they were 
quite out of place. The introduction of Lord Brouncker in 
1 68 1 was a step in the right direction, although he was not a 
professional seaman ; and other improvements were effected 
in 1682, but they came too late. The Navy Board was still 
composed of experts, but they could not stop the mischief 
wrought by the incompetent authority under which they had 
to act. The Commissioners did not find a lenient critic in 
Pepys, and his comment upon them is worth quoting because 
it contains a shrewd appreciation of Charles II. ' No king,' 
he wrote in his private Minute Book, 'ever did so unaccount- 
able a thing to oblige his people by, as to dissolve a Com- 
mission of the Admiralty then in his own hand, who best 
understands the business of the sea of any prince the world 
ever had, and things never better done, and put it into hands 
which he knew were wholly ignorant thereof, sporting him- 
self with their ignorance.' 3 The last phrase brings before us 
vividly the King's characteristic way. 

The result that followed was inevitable. The dockyards 
were disorganised; the effective force of the fleet was re- 
duced; the reserve of stores was depleted. The Commis- 
sioners adopted a wasteful policy of retrenchment at all 
costs. Pepys writes of ' the effects of inexperience, daily 
discovering themselves ' in the conduct of the Commission 4 ; 
of 'general and habitual supineness, wastefulness, and neglect 
of order universally spread through' the whole navy 5 , so 
that ' whereas peace used evermore to be improved to the 

1 Dictionary of National Biography, xix. I. 2 lb. xxxii. 383. 

3 Pepysian MSS-, No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 76. 

4 Pepys, Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88 (Oxford reprint), p. 6. 

5 lb. p. 18. 

T. 3 



34 SAMUEL PEPYS 

making up the wasteful effects of war, this appears... to have 
brought the navy into a state more deplorable in its ships 
and less relievable from its stores than can be shewn to have 
happened at the close of the most expenseful war.' 1 His 
indictment is supported by a formidable array of facts and 
figures, and as Macaulay points out 2 , is confirmed by a 
report from an expert of the French Admiralty, so it cannot 
be dismissed as mere denunciation inspired by a natural 
prejudice against the men who had displaced him. 

Things were so bad that in 1684 the Commission was 
revoked, and from this date until his death the office of Lord 
High Admiral was once more executed by the King, with 
the advice and assistance of ' his royal brother the Duke of 
York' 3 ; and on his accession James II became his own 
Lord High Admiral. The office of Secretary of the Admir- 
alty was revived, and Pepys was appointed thereto ; and the 
government of the navy remained in the same hands until 
the Revolution. 

The important episode of the period 1684- 1688 is the 
appointment of the Special Commission of 1686 for the 
regeneration of the navy — an experiment in organisation 
for which Pepys was largely responsible 4 . A sum of ^"400,000 
a year was to be assigned to the navy 5 , and this was to be 

1 Pepys, Memoires of the Royal Navy, 1679-88 (Oxford reprint), p. 9. 

2 History of England (Longmans, 2 vols., 1880), i. 146. 

3 It is often said that the office of Lord High Admiral was restored to the 
Duke; but this is clearly not the view of Pepys (Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, 
xi. 225). 

4 Materials for the history of this experiment are to be found in a manuscript 
volume in the Pepysian Library entitled, My Diary relating to the Commission 
constituted by King James If Anno 1686, for the Recovery of the Navy, with a 
Collection of the Principal Papers incident to and conclusive of the same (Pepysian 
MSS., No. 1490). 

5 Pepys's 'Proposition' is printed in his Memoires (pp. 18-23); an ^ further 
details of the exact distribution of the ^400,000 a year are given in a paper en- 
titled ' Measures supporting my Proposition' (Pepysian MSS., No. 1490, p. 123). 
See also the writer's Introduction to the Oxford reprint of the Memoires. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 35 

administered by a body of experts, on which the two most 
important figures were Sir Anthony Deane, the great ship- 
builder, and Sir John Narbrough, the hero of the war with 
Algiers. The Commission was intended to last for a term of 
three years, the time estimated to be necessary for putting 
the navy into a state of thorough repair, but its work was 
performed with such energy and efficiency that the Com- 
mission was dissolved in October, 1688, after only 2\ years 
tenure of office, and the system of government by Principal 
Officers and Commissioners of the Navy acting under the 
Lord High Admiral was restored. 

The way in which Pepys manoeuvred Sir Anthony Deane 
on to the Commission deserves a passing notice. It was not 
an easy matter, as Deane replied to a flattering overture by 
pointing out that his ordinary business as a shipwright was 
bringing in to him ' more than double the benefit... the com- 
mon wages of a Commissioner of the Navy amounts to,' and 
moreover he was fifteen in family, ' and not without expec- 
tation of more.' 1 Pepys was then directed by James II to 
make a list of all the notable shipbuilders in England, one 
of whom might be selected as an alternative to Deane. The 
result was a very libellous and tendencious document 2 . 
Sir John Tippetts was dismissed because ' his age and infir- 
mities arising from the gout (keeping him generally within 
doors, or at least incapable of any great action abroad) would 
render him wholly unable to go through the fatigue of the 
work designed for Sir Anthony Deane.' The second candi- 
date, Sir Phineas Pett, is briefly dismissed with the words 
' In every respect as the first.' Another candidate ' never 
built a ship in his life. . .he is also full of the gout, and by con- 
sequence as little capable as the former of the fatigue before 
mentioned.' Another is ' illiterate. . .low-spirited, of little ap- 
pearance or authority ' ; his father ' a great drinker, and since 
1 Pepysian MSS., No. 1490, p. 131. 2 lb. p. 145. 

3—2 



36 SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY 

killed with it.' Mr Lawrence, the master shipwright at Wool- 
wich, is ' a low-spirited, slow, and gouty man... illiterate and 
supine to the last degree.' Another is ' an ingenious young 
man, but said rarely to have handled a tool in his life' — a mere 
draughtsman. Another ' is one that loves his ease, as having 
been ever used to it, not knowing what it is to work or take 
pains... and very debauched.' Another is ' a good and pain- 
ful, but very plain and illiterate man; a Phanatick; of no 
authority and countenance.' And so he goes on through an 
appalling list of disqualifications, which had their intended 
effect upon the King's mind; they induced 'full conviction 
of the necessity of his prevailing with and satisfying Sir A. 
D.' 1 Satisfactory terms were arranged 2 , and on Saturday, 
13 March, 1686, Mr Pepys brought Sir Anthony Deane 'to 
the King in the morning to kiss his hand, who declared the 
same to him to his full satisfaction, and afterwards to my 
Lord Treasurer at the Treasury Chamber with the same 
mutual content.' 3 

The circumstances in which the second Secretaryship of 
Samuel Pepys came to an end are part of the general history 
of England, and need no repetition here. On 21 December, 
1688, Pepys mentions that the King was 'a second time 
withdrawn,' 4 and on Christmas Day we find him writing to 
the fleet at the bidding of the Prince of Orange 5 . He con- 
tinued to act as Secretary of the Admiralty until 20 Febru- 
ary, 1689, but on 9 March he was directed to hand over his 
papers to his successor, Phineas Bowles 6 . He was too inti- 
mately associated with the exiled James for the government 
of the Revolution to continue him in power. 

1 Pepysian MSS., No. 1490, p. (6. 

2 The precise nature of these does not transpire, but Deane had stated that, in 
justice to his family, he could not value his whole time at less than ,£1000 a 
year {Id. p. 139). The King's first offer was ^"500. 3 lb. p. 17. 

4 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, xv. 470. 5 lb. xv. 472. 

6 Dictionary of National Biography, xliv. 364. 



LECTURE III 

FINANCE 

It is scarcely a matter for surprise that those historians who 
were the first to appreciate the great Puritan movement, so 
long under a cloud, should have yielded to the temptation 
of over-emphasizing the contrast between the vigour and 
comparative purity of government during the Interregnum 
and its nervelessness and corruption under the Younger 
Stuarts. That some such contrast exists it is impossible to 
deny. The Commonwealth navy was on the whole well 
managed, and every reader of Pepys's Diary knows that he 
was disposed to regret in private the administrative successes 
of the treasonable times. 3 June, 1667: ' To Spring Garden, 
and there eat and drank a little, and then to walk up and 
down the garden, reflecting upon the bad management of 
things now, compared with what it was in the late rebellious 
times, when men, some for fear and some for religion, 
minded their business, which none now do, by being void of 
both.' Or again, 4 September, 1668 : ' The business of abusing 
the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being 
the people that at last will be found the wisest.' But it is 
possible, while dwelling upon a moral contrast, to ignore the 
difference in the financial situation. The virtuous Puritan 
colonels who controlled the navy under the Commonwealth 
had command of large financial resources, for confiscations 
and Royalist compositions were very productive, and the 
governments of the Interregnum could apply to the raising 
of taxes irresistible military force. As far as the composi- 
tions went, they were, however, living upon capital, and 
when this was exhausted, the pressure of financial difficulties 



38 SAMUEL PEPYS 

soon began to be felt. The maintenance of the great pro- 
fessional army came to be a burden too heavy for the 
resources of the country as they stood in that day, and the 
navy suffered from the competition of the army for the avail- 
able funds. The disease usually assigned to the Restoration 
period declared itself before the Restoration took place, and 
when the King came back he found the navy already deep 
in debt. In 1659 nearly half a million was due on account 
of wages alone, and the total debt must have been over 
three-quarters of a million 1 . An official report of July, 1659, 
estimated the outgoings at ,£20,000 a week, but pointed out 
that ' since May 3 1 has not been received above .£8000 a 
week.' 2 It must be remembered that with 17th century 
money values these figures are very much larger than they 
look, and as the State had not yet invented funding debt, 
and so charging it on posterity, its position was that of an 
extravagant private person. Thus the naval administrators 
of the Restoration were succeeding to a bankrupt estate, and 
in the Diary Pepys strikes a note of despair. 31 July, 1660: 
the navy ' is in very sad condition, and money must be 
raised for it' 11 June, 1661 : 'now the credit of the Office 
is brought so low, that none will sell us anything without 
our personal security given for the same.' 31 August, 1661 : 
' we are at our Office quiet, only for lack of money all things 
go to rack.' 30 September, 1661 : ' the want of money puts 
all things, and above all the Navy, out of order.' 28 June, 
1662 : ' God knows, the King is not able to set out five ships 
at this present without great difficulty, we neither having 
money, credit, nor stores.' 

The same difficulties were felt before, during, and after the 
Second Dutch War. In September, 1664, when war was im- 
pending, Commissioner Pett tried to buy tallow and candles 
for the navy at Maidstone, but found the country ' so shy ' 

1 A. W. Tedder, The Navy of the Restoration, p. 41. 2 lb. p. 41 n. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 39 

that they refused to deal 1 . In January, 1666, the Commis- 
sioner at Portsmouth wrote that all men distrust London 
pay 2 . Nearly half the letters to the Navy Board calendared 
for 1665-6 refer to the difficulties experienced by govern- 
ment agents in obtaining supplies 3 . In this way bargains 
were lost for want of ready money 4 , and where credit was 
obtained, enormous prices had to be paid 5 . The hardships to 
private persons were intolerable. A firm of slop-sellers who 
had supplied goods to the value of .£24,800 during the last 
two years, and had received only ;£8oo, would shortly be 
ruined in their estates and families 6 . A Bristol shipbuilder 
writes: 'I have so disabled myself in the relief of poor 
workmen that I am now out of a capacity of relieving 
mine own family: I have disbursed and engaged for more 
than I am worth.' 7 The Barber Surgeons' Company claim 
£1,496. 6s. \od., long unpaid, for filling medicine chests, and 
complain of the opprobrious language they receive from 
surgeons who can get no pay 8 ; and a certain poor widow, a 
creditor of the government, is in a most deplorable condition, 
without a stick of wood or coals to lay on the fire, and owing 
money to about fifteen people as poor as herself, who torment 
her daily 9 . 

The total annual charge of the navy in time of peace is 
not easy to calculate. On 18 February, 1663 10 , Pepys him- 

1 Stale Papers, Domestic, Charles II, cii. 123. 

2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1665-6, p. 189. See also ib. 1666-7, 
p. 233, and Diary, 20 June, 1667. 

3 Ib. 1605-6, p. xxxix. 4 Ib. 1666-7, p. 228, and 1665-6, p. 189. 

5 Even in 1658 the Navy Commissioners had been obliged to buy at from 
30 to 50 per cent, above the market price (M. Oppenheim, The Administration 
of the Royal Navy, 1509-1660, p. 351). 

6 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1664-5, P* 353- 

7 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, ccxlii. 56 ; Calendar of State Papers, 
Domestic, 1667-8, p. 563. 

8 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1667, p. 454. 

9 Cf ib. 1667-8, p. 455 and 1666-7, P- 2 33« 

10 Diary. 



40 SAMUEL PEPYS 

self estimated ' the true charge of the Navy,' since the King's 
coming in to Christmas last, to have been ' after the rate of 
.£374,743 a year,' but it is not clear what this figure includes. 
Perhaps the pre-war expenditure may be put at not far 
short of £400,000. In a letter to Sir Philip Warwick, dated 
14 March, 1666 1 , he supplies materials for estimating expen- 
diture in time of war. So enormous were the arrears that 
the sum of £2,312,876 would be needed to pay the fleet and 
yards to 1 August, 1665, to clear off the arrears of the Vic- 
tualler and provide victuals for the current year, to finish 
ten new ships that had been ordered, and to meet wear 
and tear and wages for the first ten months of 1666. To- 
wards this the total funds available, including a Parliamen- 
tary grant of £1,250,000 made in October, 1665, amounted 
to £1,498,483. Thus there was a deficit of £814,393. But 
to this would have to be added other charges not included 
in the first estimate — principally wear and tear and wages 
for the last two months of 1666, arrears of wages, and other 
debts, which would increase the deficit to £1,277,161, over 
and above ' the whole expense of the Office of the Ord- 
nance.' In other words, the funds available for the navy in 
March, 1666, in the second year of the war, were scarcely 
more than half its probable requirements 2 . Nevertheless, 
Pepys derived great consolation from a calculation which 
he had made of the cost of the First Dutch War in 1653, 
whereby it appeared that ' the State's charge then seems to 
have exceeded the King's for the same service and time by 
£i7i,785.' 3 This is the justification of a note in the Diary 

1 Pepysian MSS., No. 1589, pp. 1-3. 

2 Another statement of the expenditure of the navy during the Second Dutch 
War is to be found in a letter from the Navy Board to the Lord Treasurer, 
dated 24 September, 1666, which gives for the information of Parliament, just 
then about to meet, an estimate for the period i September, 1664,1029 September, 
1666. This calculation is given in the writer's Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 102. 

3 Pepysian MSS., No. 2589, p. 118. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 41 

of 16 March, 1669: ' Upon the whole do find that the late 
times in all their management were not more husbandly than 
we.' To meet the situation recourse was again had to Parlia- 
ment, and in October, 1666, the Commons voted ,£1,800,000, 
although their suspicion that the money was being wasted 
led to the appointment of that Commission of Public Ac- 
counts which was to give Pepys and his colleagues infinite 
trouble 1 , and was to lay the foundation of Parliamentary 
enquiry into the proceedings of the executive. 

As soon as the war came to an end, the higher authorities 
began to consider schemes of retrenchment in the navy. A 
committee appointed 29 July, 1667, by Order in Council, to 
consider the King's expenses called for a report upon the 
cost of the navy, and the Duke of York put forward some 
preliminary suggestions 2 , the most important being a reduc- 
tion of certain establishments and the closing of the dock- 
yard at Harwich. He also suggested a reduction in the 
number of the Commissioners from ten to six, or at most 
seven, although he was disposed to resist any great reduction 
in their salaries on the ground that these should be sufficient 
to make the Principal Officers and Commissioners ' value 
their employments, and not subject them to a necessity of 
base compliances with others to the King's prejudice, by 
which to get one shilling to himself he must lose ten to the 
King, and when he shall have once subjected himself to an 
inferior pleasure by such a falsehood, he never more dares 
act the prfrt of a good officer, being by his former guilt be- 
come a slave to his inferior.' This argument, while it served 
incidentally to protect Pepys's emoluments, is not a bad 
statement of the case for a living wage as an antidote 
to corruption. The scheme eventually adopted, suggested 
by Sir William Coventry, aimed at a reduction of peace 

1 Ranke, History of England, iii. 449-50; see also the Diary. 

2 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, ccxiii. 65. 



42 SAMUEL PEPYS 

expenditure to ^"200,000 a year 1 , but the goal was never 
reached, for the naval expenditure of the next two or three 
years was not, as a matter of fact, limited to the ^"200,000 
a year proposed, nor was ready money provided — an essen- 
tial condition of the scheme. The policy of retrenchment 
on a great scale would have to be carried on for a long time 
before it could affect the accumulated masses of the navy 
debt 2 , and there is abundant evidence of continued financial 
stringency after the war as well as before it. This carried 
its nemesis into the Third Dutch War. The comparative 
failure of the naval operations of 1673 was due to the fact 
that the fleet had been sent out insufficiently manned and 
equipped ; and the want of a reserve of stores and of men 
and materials for refitting occasioned the loss of nearly six 
weeks in the best season of the year 3 . 

As soon as the Third Dutch War came to an end in 
February, 1674, another period of feverish retrenchment 
set in, and an attempt was made ■ to lessen the growing 
charge in the navy, towards which no one particular seems 
more to conduce than that of reducing the number of the 
persons employed therein, both at sea and in the yards.' 4 
Other economies were also practised. Ships as they came 
in were paid off and laid up 5 , and it was decided to under- 
take no new works ' until his Majesty hath in some measure 

1 Penn, Memorials of Sir William Perm, ii. 528; Calendar of State Papers, 
Domestic, 1667, p. 420. On Coventry's connexion with the scheme see Diary, 
19 August, 1667. Particulars of it are given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., 
i. 104. With this calculation should be compared a detailed estimate of the 
annual charge of 'his Majesty's navy in harbour' for the year 1684 (Pepysian 
MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 402), the substance of which is given 
in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. in. The total is ^135,084. 6s. nd., but 
this is exclusive of ships at sea. 

2 Estimated at the end of the war as ,£1,100,000 (Calendar of State Papers, 
Domestic, 1667, p. 471). 

3 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1673, pp. x, 218, 333, 341, 510. 

4 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, iii. 130. 5 lb. iii. 182. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 43 

got over the debt which remains to him upon the old.' 1 
Meanwhile the official correspondence contains frequent 
references to the shortness of money. For instance, in Janu- 
ary, 1674, the Swan was delayed at Plymouth 'from the 
unwillingness of the tradesmen to trust his Majesty further' 2 ; 
and in December,. 1677, Pepys reports from Sir John Kemp- 
thorne that ' the brewer at Portsmouth doth absolutely de- 
clare that he will not provide any beer for the Rupert and 
Centurion till he is better assured of his payment than he 
now is.' 3 At the beginning of 1678 the situation was some- 
what relieved by the Parliamentary vote for preparations 
against France, but this improvement was of short duration, 
and in December we find Pepys referring to one of the most 
wasteful consequences of a want of money — ' that mighty 
charge which has so long lain upon our hands for want of 
money wherewith to discharge those of the ships which 
remain yet unpaid off.' 4 

In spite of the frequent references to want of funds scat- 
tered up and down the official correspondence, the financial 
position of the navy greatly improved in the later years of 
the Restoration period. At Lady Day, 1686, the debts of 
the Navy Office were reckoned at £17 1,836. 2s. gd. — a re- 
markable reduction on the enormous totals of 1666 5 . After 
the accession of James II no less than £305,806 was paid 
by the Treasurer of the Navy on account of debts incurred 

in Charles II's reign 6 , so it is not surprising to find that, 
4 

1 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, iii. 186. 

2 lb. iii. 49, 51, 52. 

3 lb. vi. 277. Other instances are given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., 
i. 108. 

4 lb. viii. 403. 

5 A State of the Debt contracted in the Navy between 1 January, i67i[-2]... 
and 25 March, 1686, and which remains at this day unpaid according to the 
books in this Office... (Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 18). This paper is printed 
in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. no. 

6 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 20. 



44 SAMUEL PEPYS 

both in the closing years of Charles II and the earlier years 
of James II, money was still difficult to get, and the old 
complaints recur although in a less aggravated form. 

Bearing in mind these facts about finance, let us pass on 
to consider some of their practical results. 

During the period from 1660 to 1688 the operations of 
the navy were grievously hampered by the deficiency of 
men, both in the dockyards and at sea; and this deficiency 
was mainly, if not entirely, due to the want of pay. 

The state of things during the Second Dutch War was 
appalling. The Diary contains pitiable stories of poor sea- 
men starving in the streets because there was no money to 
pay their wages. 7 October, 1665: 'Did business, though 
not much, at the Office ; because of the horrible crowd and 
lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in 
the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and per- 
plex me to the heart ; and more at noon when we were to 
go through them, for then a whole hundred of them followed 
us; some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us.' 1 
We hear of wages nine months 2 , twenty-two 3 , twenty-six, 
thirty-four 4 , and even fifty-two 6 months in arrear. One 
captain with a breezy style complains that for want of 
pay ' instead of a young commander, he is rendered an old 
beggar.' 6 The crews of two ships petition the Navy Board 
to order them their pay ' that their families may not be 
altogether starved in the streets, and themselves go like 
heathens, having nothing to cover their nakedness.' 7 The 
Commissioner at Portsmouth writes of workmen in the yard 

1 Cf. Diary, 6 July, 1665, 30 September, 1665, 31 October, 1665, and 
12 March, 1667. 

2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1664-5, P- 3°4- 

3 lb. 1667, P- 4 6 - 4 lb. 1667, p. 75. 

5 lb. 1667, p. lx note. See also p. 514. 6 lb. 1665-6, p. 385. 

7 lb. 1667, p. lx note, and p. 514. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 



45 



there, that they are turned out of doors by their landlords, 
and perish more like dogs than men \ 

Naturally enough, this state of things affected discipline. 
The crews of the Little Victory and the Pearl at Hull 
mutinied for want of pay, and refused to weigh anchor 2 , and 
in the yards the workmen gave a great deal of trouble. The 
Chatham shipwrights and caulkers, to whom two years' 
wages were owing, marched up to London to appeal to the 
Navy Board, as ' their families are denied trust and cannot 
subsist,' and under this pressure we are told that arrange- 
ments were made ' to pay off some of the most disorderly.' 3 
At Chatham the Commissioner writes that he is almost 
torn to pieces by the workmen of the yard for their weekly 
pay 4 . Sir John Mennes writes from Portsmouth on 14 July, 

1665, for money to be sent immediately to stop 'the bawlings 
and impatience of these people, especially of their wives, 
whose tongues are as foul as the daughters of Billingsgate.' 5 
Apparently the money did not come, and in October the 
Commissioner was forced to lend the men ten shillings 
apiece to keep them from mutiny 6 . A fortnight later a 
mutiny actually broke out, but Commissioner Middleton 
shewed praiseworthy promptitude in dealing with it. Ac- 
cording to his own account, he seized ' a good cudgel ' out 
of the hands of one of the men, and took more pains in the 
use of it than in any business for the last twelve months. 
He adds: ' I have not been troubled since.' 7 On 27 October, 

1666, th* outlook in London was so threatening that the 
Navy Board applied to the Officers of the Ordnance for 
' twelve well-fixed firelocks with a supply of powder and 
bullet ' for the defence of the Navy Office, in view of ' the 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1664-5, P- 5 22 - 

2 lb. 1667, p. 75. 3 lb. 1667-8, p. xiv. 
4 lb. 1667-8, p. 443. B lb. 1664-5, P- 475- 
6 lb. 1665-6, p. 32. 7 lb. 1665-6, p. 53. 



46 SAMUEL PEPYS 

present great refractoriness and tumultuousness of the sea- 
men.' 1 Nor did the trouble end when peace came, for the 
financial situation was still difficult. On u March, 1671, 
Jonas Shish wrote from Deptford to the Navy Board : ' The 
shipwrights and caulkers are very much enraged by reason 
that their wages is not paid them. The last night the whole 
street next the King's Yard, both of men and women, was 
in an uproar, and meeting with Mr Bagwell, my fore- 
man, they fell on him, and it was God's great mercy they 
had not spoiled him. I was then without the gate at my 
son's house, and hearing the tumult, I did think how Israel 
stoned Hadoram that was over the tribute, and King Reho- 
boam made speed and gat him up to fly to Jerusalem, so I 
gat speedily into the King's Yard, for I judge if the rude 
multitude had met with me, I should have had worse measure 
than my foreman.' 2 

In view of these facts about pay, it is not surprising that 
it was found difficult to obtain men. In order to man the 
fleets for service against the Dutch it was necessary to 
employ the press, and this produced very poor material. 
Pepys notes in 1666 that men were pressed in London that 
' were not liable to it,' ' poor patient labouring men and 
housekeepers,' 3 and he adds ' it is a great tyranny.' The 
redoubtable Commissioner Middleton, writing from Ports- 
mouth on 29 March, 1666, tells Pepys that he is ashamed 
to see such pressed men as are sent from Devonshire — one 
with the falling sickness and a lame arm ; another with dead 
palsy on one side and not any use of his right arm 4 . A year 
later he makes similar complaints from Chatham with regard 
to the pressed men supplied by Watermen's Hall. ' The 

1 Historical MSS. Commission, Fifteenth Report, Appendix, pt. ii., p. 167. 

2 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, ccxcvii. 19. Other instances are given 
in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 1-20. 

3 Diary, 1 and 2 July, 1666. 

4 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1665-6, p. 323. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 47 

Masters of Watermen's Hall are good Christians but very- 
knaves ; they should be ordered to send down ten or twelve 
old women to be nurses to the children they send.' 1 

On the outbreak of the Third Dutch War in 1672 the 
same difficulties recurred, but the complaints are less fre- 
quent and less serious, and the condition of things had 
evidently improved. But ships had still to be manned by 
pressing, and the quality of the pressed men left much to be 
desired. For instance, two watermen, pressed in 1673, are 
described as ' little children, and never at sea before,' who 
could not be suffered ' to pester the ship.' 2 

' It can never be well in the navy,' wrote Pepys on 5 Sep- 
tember, 1680, 'till the poor seamen can be paid once in a 
year at furthest, and tickets answered like bills of exchange; 
whereas at this very day... ships are kept out two or three 
years, and four of them just now ordered forth again only 
for want of money, after being brought in to be paid off.' 3 
A little later he notes the effect of this upon discipline 4 , and 
comments on the 'unreasonable hardship' entailed by 'the 
general practice of our navy ' ' of paying those ships off first 
where the least sum clears the most men; those who have 
served longest, and therefore need their pay most, being 
postponed to those who have served least.' 5 In a maturer 
reflection made after his retirement, dated December, 1692, 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1667-8, p. xv. As late as 1742 
Captain John Hamilton reports the pressing of a lime-burner who was nearly 
blind, and *a little old cobbler of 56, taken out of his stall rather it should 
seem for a pastime than service ' ; and letters of 1747 shew that the pressing of 
mere lads, or of persons not able-bodied, was a subject of ' general and constant 
complaint' (Public Record Office, Captains' 1 Letters, H 12; Secretary's Let- 
ters, 3). In 1864 or 1865 a 'man' who weighed 70 lbs. was sent on board the 
Prince Consort at Spithead. 

2 13 April, 1673: State Papers, Domestic, Charles LI, cccxliii. 141. See also 
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1673, p. 228. 

3 Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 24. 

4 Lb. p. 39. 5 lb. p. 71. 



48 SAMUEL PEPYS 

Pepys still places the ' length and badness of the payment 
of the seaman's wages' first among his 'discouragements.' 
This, together with ' their ill-usage from commanders, and 
want of permission to help themselves in intervals of public 
service by a temporary liberty of earning a penny in the 
merchant's ' are ' discouragements that I cannot think any- 
thing can be proposed of temptations of other kinds sufficient 
to reconcile them to.' 1 Nevertheless, Pepys claimed credit 
for more punctual payments for the Special Commission of 
1686, during the time they held office. ' Not a penny left un- 
paid,' he writes, ' to any officer, seaman, workman, artificer, 
or merchant, for any service done in, or commodity delivered 
to the use of the Navy, either at sea or on shore, within the 
whole time of this Commission, where the party claiming 
the same was in the way to receive it.' 2 

In connexion with the seamen something should be said 
about the organisation for the care of the sick and wounded. 
The credit of being the first English Government to recog- 
nise the obligation of providing for the sick and wounded 
belongs to the Commonwealth. The principle that the State 
should provide for those who had suffered in its service was 
laid down by the Long Parliament in 1642, and an attempt 
was made to apply it to the case of soldiers wounded in the 
Civil War 3 . A little later the same principle was applied to 
seamen, and the idea and the machinery were taken over by 
the Restoration statesmen. In October, 1664, in view of the 
impending war with the Dutch, a temporary Commission 
for the care of Sick and Wounded Seamen on the model of 
the Commission of 1653 was appointed for the duration of 
the war, the most active member of it being John Evelyn, 



1 Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 287. 

2 Memoires of the Royal Navy (Oxford reprint), p. 80. 

3 C. H. Firth, Cromwell 's Army, ch. ix. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 49 

the diarist 1 . This Commission was re-appointed in March, 
1672, for the Third Dutch War, and the elaborate instruc- 
tions given to it are to be found in the volume of Naval 
Precedents in the Pepysian Library 2 . The Commissioners 
were to distribute the sick and wounded among the hospitals 
of England, 'thereby to ease his Majesty's charge'; and as 
soon as this accommodation was exhausted, they were to 
billet them upon private persons at the King's expense. 
London, Yarmouth, Ipswich, Southwold, Aldeburgh, Har- 
wich, Chatham, Gravesend, Deal, Dover, Gosport, Southamp- 
ton, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and Plymouth were specially 
assigned for the reception of sick and wounded men set 
ashore from their ships. At these ' places of reception ' as 
they were called, the Commissioners were to appoint an 
agent, and to provide ' a physician (if need be) and chirur- 
geon, and nurses, fire, candle, linen, medicaments, and all 
things necessary,' but in ' as husbandly and thrifty a manner ' 
as might be. The Commission was also charged with the 
care of prisoners of war, and was instructed to provide for 
their maintenance on a scale ' not exceeding $d. per diem 
for every common seaman and inferior officer, and I2d. 
per diem for every commission officer.' For a time also it 
was concerned with awarding gratuities to the 'widows, 
children, and impotent parents of such as shall be slain in 
his Majesty's service at sea'; but in 1673 these duties were 
taken over by another commission, for Widows and Orphans, 
and a regular scale was established on which gratuities were 
to be given. Widows of men slain in the service were to 
receive a gratuity equal to eleven months of their husband's 
pay, an additional third being allowed to each orphan except 
those who were married at the time of the father's death. 
If the deceased left no widow, his mother was to receive the 

1 Evelyn's Diary (ed. Austin Dobson), ii. 218. 

2 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, pp. 537-53- 



5 o SAMUEL PEPYS 

bounty, provided that she was herself a widow, indigent, and 
over 50 years of age. The bounty to a child was to be allowed 
to accumulate until it was of an age to be apprenticed. This 
Commission terminated at the end of the war, and by an 
order of 21 December, 1674, its functions devolved on the 
Navy Board. 

These arrangements were all admirable upon paper, and 
the members of the Commissions displayed indefatigable in- 
dustry, but in this department of affairs as in others the best 
of schemes were wrecked on the rock of finance. On 30 Sep- 
tember, 1665, Evelyn wrote that he had 5000 sick, wounded, 
and prisoners dying for want of bread and shelter. ' His 
Majesty's subjects,' he adds, 'die in our sight and at our 
thresholds without our being able to relieve them, which, 
with our barbarous exposure of the prisoners to the utmost 
of sufferings, must needs redound to his Majesty's great dis- 
honour, and to the consequence of losing the hearts of our 
own people, who are ready to execrate and stone us as we 
pass.' 1 On 5 June, 1672, the same loyal and humane gentle- 
man wrote in a similar strain from Rochester : ' I have near 
600 sick and wounded men in this place, 200 prisoners, and 
the apprehension of hundreds more.,.. I hope there will be 
care to supply my district here with moneys, or else I shall 
be very miserable, for no poor creature does earn his bread 
with greater anxiety than I at present.' 2 The moneys did 
not come, and by the end of the summer some of the locali- 
ties were becoming restive at the non-payment of arrears. 
There was a great deal of noise made at Gravesend when 
the Commissioners of the Navy passed by, and on 27 August 
Evelyn wrote to Pepys : ' Those cursed people of Gravesend 
have no bowels, and swear that they will receive not a man 

1 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, cxxxiii. 63 ; see also Calendar of State 
Papers, Domestic, 1666-7, P- 398- 

2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1672, p. 157. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 5 1 

more till their arrears are discharged. We are above £2000 
indebted in Kent, where our daily charge is £100 for 
quarters only. Judge by this how comfortable a station I 

am in.' 1 

When the war came to an end the temporary Commission 
was withdrawn, and by a warrant from the Lords of the 
Admiralty dated 28 March, 1674, its duties were handed 
over to James Pearse, ' chirurgeon-general of his Majesty's 
navy.' 2 Pearse was a man of business after Pepys's own 
heart, and he carefully systematised the whole of his func- 
tions, reducing them 'into such a method that it is not 
possible for me (or whomsoever shall succeed me) to wrong 
his Majesty or injure his subjects.' 3 

< Mariners and soldiers maimed in his Majesty's service at 
sea' were entitled to relief out of the Chest at Chatham, a 
fund provided by deducting 6d. a month from each man's pay. 
Fourpence a month was also deducted for the maintenance 
of a chaplain, and Pepys explains how the Chest benefited 
from an arrangement by which all moneys were also assigned 
to it 'arising out of the seamen's contributions for a chap- 
lain upon ships where (by the remissness or impiety of the 
commander) no chaplain is provided." A paper of 24 July, 
1685 5 , gives the scale of this relief: 
A leg or arm lost is £6. 13. 4- paid as present relief, and 
so much settled as an annual pension for his hfe- 

£6 l 3 4 

time r * R 

If two lege be lost his pension is doubled . . ■ A 1 J 

1 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, cccxxviii. n 4 . 

2 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, xi. 106. 

3 //xi pp 103-110, where Pearse's report of September, i68 7 , giving an 
account of the reforms effected by him during his long tenure of office, is pasted 
into the volume. The substance of this is printed in Catalogue of Pe P ysian MSS., 

i- 137- 

4 Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., 1. 205. 

5 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, vi. 71. 

4—2 



5 2 ' SAMUEL PEPYS 

For the loss of two arms, in consideration of his being 
thereby rendered uncapable of getting a livelihood 

any other way, per annum ^15 o o 

But if an arm be on, and disabled only, is ^5 per annum ,£5 o o 

An eye lost is £4 per annum £4 o o 

...And where any wound or hurt occasions a fracture, contusion, im- 
postumation, or the like, under the loss of a limb, such are viewed by 
the chirurgeons, and certified to deserve what in their opinions may be 
a proportionable reward in full satisfaction. And these sorts of hurts 
frequently accompany the loss of a limb in other parts of the body, for 
which they have a reward apart from their annual allowance, according 
to the chirurgeon's discretion. 

One more question remains for our consideration to-day — 
that of the rates of pay in the navy during the period 1660-88. 

As far as the rates themselves were concerned the story 
is one of steady improvement. In 1653 the pay of a general 
or admiral of the fleet had been £3 a day during his em- 
ployment; of a vice-admiral, £2 ; and of a rear-admiral, ^i 1 . 
The scale adopted by Order in Council, 26 February, 1666 2 , 
raised the admiral's pay from £3 to £4; the vice-admiral's 
from £2 to £2. 10s.; and the rear-admiral's from .£1 to £2. 
The vice-admiral of a squadron only was to get 30s. and the 
rear-admiral of a squadron £1. The pay of the other officers 
was not increased beyond the rates fixed in 1653 3 . The able 
seamen in 1660 received 24s. a month; the ordinary seamen, 
igs. ; the apprentices or 'gromets,' 145. 3d.; and the 'boys,' 
gs. 6d. The wages of the carpenter, boatswain, and gunner 
varied from £2 to £4 a month according to the rate of the 
ship. Monthly wages in harbour, as distinguished from sea 
wages, were on a lower scale 4 . In 1686 a new establishment 

1 State Papers, Domestic, Interr. xxxii. 39. 

2 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 217. 

3 A table of these rates is given in Oppenheim, p. 360. 

4 See Pepysian MSS., No. 488, King James IPs Pocket Book of Rates and 
Memorandums. Tables of harbour and rigging wages taken from this source 
are printed in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 141. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 53 

of wages 1 made a few minor changes, but the pay of the 
seamen was not affected thereby. 

The misfortune of the ' poor seaman ' was not that his 
rate of pay was insufficient, but that he could not get his 
money, or if he got it at all it was in the depreciated paper 
currency known as the ' ticket.' A ticket was a certificate 
from the officers of his ship, issued to each seaman, speci- 
fying the term and quality of his service. This, when 
countersigned by the Navy Board, was the seaman's war- 
rant for demanding his wages from the Treasurer of the 
Navy on shore. The original purpose of tickets was to save 
the necessity of transporting large sums of money on board 
ship, but the want of funds in the navy soon made it the 
regular practice to treat tickets as inconvertible paper, and 
to discharge all seamen with tickets instead of money — or 
with money for part of their time and a ticket for the rest. 
Theoretically, the ticket should have supplied the seaman 
with credit almost up to the full amount of his wages, but 
in practice the long waiting and uncertainty of payment 
caused a great depreciation of tickets. We hear of women 
brokers standing about the Navy Office, offering to help 
seamen who might have tickets to ready money — but always 
upon terms. They took them to Mrs Salesbury in Carpen- 
ter's Yard, near Aldgate, who bought them for cash at a dis- 
count of at least 5-f. in the £, and sometimes more 2 . This 
caused great discontent among the seamen, who naturally 
objected to being paid by the State in depreciated paper, 
and on 13 February, 1667, Pepys records in the Diary that 
' there was a very great disorder this day at the Ticket 
Office, to the beating and bruising of the face ' of one Car- 

1 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, pp. 195-6. This new table 
of wages is printed in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 150. 

2 Catalogue of State Papers, Domestic, 1666-7, p. 426; see also id. 1665-6, 

P- 75- 



54 SAMUEL PEPYS 

casse, the clerk. The grievance attracted attention, and in 
1667 the House of Commons enquired into ' the buying and 
selling of tickets.' 1 The ' infinite great disorder' of the Ticket 
Office also attracted the notice of the Commissioners of 
Public Accounts 2 , but the reply of the Navy Board when 
invited to justify the practice was conclusive. ' We conceive 
the use of tickets to be by no other means removable than 
by a supply of money in every place, at all times, in readiness 
where and when... any... occasions of discharging seamen 
shall arise.' 3 

Apart from the disastrous results of the practice of issuing 
tickets without money to pay them, the actual machinery of 
the system was better under Charles II than it had hitherto 
been. Printed tickets with counterfoils had been invented 
under the Common wealth, and were in use as early as August, 
1654 4 ; but in 1667 elaborate instructions for the examining 
and signing of tickets and comparing them with the coun- 
terfoils were issued by the Navy Board to protect the Office 
against fraud 5 . John Hollond complains of the abuses to 
which even a solvent ticket system gave rise. It enabled 
' wrong parties ' to secure the seaman's wages — these being 
'such as have wrought upon the advantage of the men's 
necessities ' — ' either pursers, clerks of the check, or creditors, 
whether alehouse-keepers, or slopsellers, or else pretended 
sweethearts.' 6 He also notes the facilities which the system 
afforded for the abuse of ' dead pays,' tickets being issued 
for seamen who were dead or who never served, and men 
suborned to personate them at the pay-table 7 . This was 
particularly easy in time of war, when the pressure of 

1 Diary, 13 November, 1667. 

2 Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, vi. 465-80. 

3 Penn, Memorials of Sir William Penn, ii. 509. 

4 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1654, p. 548. 

5 Pepysian MSS., No. 2554. 

6 Discourses, p. 129 and nn. 7 lb. p. 140. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 55 

business was too great to allow of the tickets being properly- 
examined. 

A new and important principle in connexion with the pay 
of naval officers was established in 1668. Deane had urged 
in 1653 that seamen should be entered for continuous service 
and kept on continuous pay like soldiers 1 , but the practice 
of the navy was quite different, both for officers and men. 
Hitherto it had been usual to regard naval officers as ap- 
pointed for particular services, and possessing no claim upon 
the Government when these services had been discharged. 
The result of this was that, except in time of war, the field 
of employment was far too small, and a number of good 
officers were thrown upon their own resources. But at the 
close of the Second Dutch War the Government formally 
recognised for the first time the claims of officers to pay in 
time of peace. The first step did not go far, but the principle 
now accepted was destined to lead to the modern system of 
continuous employment. By an Order in Council of 17 July > 
1668 2 , it was provided that, in consideration of ' the eminent 
services performed in the late war against the Dutch by the 
flag officers,' and the fact that ' during the time of peace 
several of them are out of employment, and thereby disabled 
to support themselves in a condition answerable to their 
merits and those marks of honour his Majesty hath conferred 
on them,' they should receive ' pensions ' in proportion to the 
scale of pay on active service which had been fixed at the 
beginning of the war. These ' pensions ' ranged from £i$o 
a year for captains of flag-ships up to ^250 a year for rear- 
admirals and vice-admirals of fleets 3 . By an Order of 26 June, 
1674, the same scale was established for flag officers who 

1 Dictionary of National Biography, xiv. 257. 

2 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 477. There is a reference 
to this in the Diary, 6 July, 1668. Sir William Coventry was against it, and 
Pepys agreed with him. 

3 The scale is given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 145 



56 SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE ROYAL NAVY 

had served in the Third Dutch War 1 ; and in 1674 and 1675 
the system of half-pay for officers when they were not being 
actually employed was further extended to the captains and 
masters of first and second rate ships who had served in the 
war 2 , and to the commanders of squadrons 3 . 

In 1672 4 another important change relating to pay was 
made by the Council. The principle of pensions on super- 
annuation was adopted for officers. These were to be ' equal 
to the salary and known allowances they enjoyed,' provided 
that they had completed fifteen years of service ' where the 
employment is constant, such as that of boatswains, gunners, 
pursers, carpenters, &c.,' or eight years where it is not con- 
stant, 'such as that of masters, chirurgeons, &c.' In 1673 5 
the principle of superannuation was extended from cases of 
old age to officers wounded in service at sea. Such officers 
were to receive one year's wages, ' and the continuance of 
them in pay during the whole time they shall by good proof 
appear to have lain under cure.' 

1 Naval Precedents, p. 222. 

2 Order in Council of 6 May, 1674 [Naval Precedents, p. 164 ; see also p. 259). 
The substance of the Order is given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 146. 

3 Order in Council, 19 May, 1675 {Naval Precedents, p. 165). The substance 
of the Order is given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 147. 

4 Order in Council, 6 December, 1672 (Naval Precedents, p. 198). 

5 Order in Council, 6 June, 1673 (Naval Precedents, p. 218). There is another 
copy in Miscellanies, vi. 67. For subsequent extensions of the Order, in 1673 
and 1674, see Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 148-9. 



LECTURE IV 

VICTUALLING; DISCIPLINE; SHIPS; GUNS 

THE arrangements for victualling had always had an im- 
portant bearing upon the contentment and efficiency of the 
Lamen. ■ However the pay of the mariners, both for sea and 
harbour, may be wanting for some time,' wrote one of the 
Victuallers, ■ yet they must have continual supplies of vic- 
tuals, otherwise they will be apt to fall into very great 
disorders- Pepys, in his private Minute Book', makes _fte 
same point. -Englishmen,' he says, 'and more especially 
seamen, love their bellies above anything else, and therefore 
it must always be remembered, in the management of the 
victualling of the navy, that to make any abatemen from 
them in the quantity or agreeableness of the victuals is to 
discourage and provoke them in the tenderest point, and 
will sooner render them disgusted with the King's service 
than any one other hardship that can be put upon them. 
But in this department also the want of money had fatal 
effects, and contributed more than any other cause : to the 
comparative failure of the administration to provide victuals 
of good quality, sufficient quantity, and promptly delivered 
where they were required. 

Beforfe the Restoration the victualling was being managed 
by Victualling Commissioners ' upon account, the btate 
keeping the business in its own hands'. But the system had 
scarcely a fair trial owing to financial embarrassments , 

■ Stale Papers, Domestic, Charles II, ccxcix. HI. 



2 P- *54- 

3 Hollond, Discourses, pp. i?4» T 54- 

4 Oppenheim, p. 326. 



5 8 SAMUEL PEPYS 

and just before the King's return matters were as bad as 
they could well be 1 . The restored Government reverted to 
the older system of contract, and in September, 1660, Denis 
Gauden was appointed contractor under the satisfying title 
of ' surveyor-general of all victuals to be provided for his 
Majesty's ships and maritime causes,' with a fee of £50 a 
year, and Sd. a day for a clerk 2 . The whole burden of the 
victualling therefore rested upon a single man, and when 
the war with the Dutch broke out, he was unable to grapple 
with its demands ; yet no fundamental change could be made 
in the system until the Government was in a position to 
settle accounts with him. Thus the victuals, although on the 
whole good in quality, were deficient in quantity, and when 
Gauden was remonstrated with he could always reply, and 
generally with perfect truth, that it was impossible for him 
to do better as long as the Government failed to carry out 
their part of the contract, and to make payments on account 
at the stipulated times 3 . In the spring of 1665, when the 
fleet was fitting for sea, complaints of the failure of the Vic- 
tualler were frequent 4 . Later on, when Pepys went down to 
visit the fleet in September, Lord Sandwich told him that 
most of the ships had been without beer ' these three weeks 
or month, and but few days' dry provisions.' 5 In this year 
complaints of uneatable provisions occur, though not often, 
but when they were bad they were sometimes very bad. On 
10 August, Commissioner Middleton wrote to Pepys from 
Portsmouth that the Coventry was still in port; her beer 
had nearly poisoned one man, who ' being thirsty drank a 



1 Oppenheim, p. 327. 

2 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, Docquet Book, p. 46. 

3 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1665-6, p. xxxix. See also pp. 23, 27, 
55. 203. 

4 lb. 1664-5, pp. 306, 311, 317, 321, 382. 
8 Diary, 18 September, 1665. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 59 

great draught.' 1 Probably now, as undoubtedly later, the 
backwardness of the victualling in turn reacted upon the 
deficiency of men, for the sailors deserted from ships where 
they could get no food 2 . 

The practical breakdown of the victualling system during 
the spring and summer of 1665 led to the establishment, at 
Pepys's suggestion, of new machinery for keeping the Vic- 
tualler up to the mark — a Surveyor of Victuals appointed 
at the King's charge in each port, with power to examine 
the Victualler's books; and a central officer in London to 
whom they were to report weekly 3 . As soon as Pepys's plan 
was adopted, he wrote to suggest that he himself should be 
the new Surveyor- General of Victualling 4 , and on 27 October 
he accepted office 5 at a salary of .£300 a year 6 . The ap- 
pointment was temporary only, and came to an end at the 
conclusion of peace. While it lasted it effected a slight im- 
provement. Pepys himself was much pleased with the suc- 
cess of his arrangements, and he was complimented upon 
them by the Duke of York 7 . As he had £500 a year from 
Gauden as well as the £300 from the King 8 , he managed to 
do well out of the war. 

The experience of the war had shewn the weak points of 
the one-man system, and in subsequent contracts several 
Victuallers were associated in a kind of partnership 9 , but the 
fundamental difficulty was one of finance, and this a mere 
multiplication of persons did little to meet. Thus there 
are complaints in 1 67 1 10 , and the difficulties were greatly 

1 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, cxxviii. 85 ; see also Calendar of State 
Papers, Domestic, 1664-5, P- 4&o- 

2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1 667-8, p. xviii. 

3 lb. 1665-6, p. 7; see also p. 11, and Diary, 14 October, 1665. 

4 Diary, 19 October, 1665. 

5 lb. 27 October, 1665. 6 lb. 31 October, 1665. 
7 lb. 26 July, 1666. 8 lb. 4 June, 1667. 

9 See Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 155. 10 See ib. i. 156-7. 



6o SAMUEL PEPYS 

increased when the Third Dutch War broke out in the spring 
of 1672. The Victuallers received such scanty payments from 
the Government that they had to carry on the service with 
their own money and credit 1 , and eventually their condition 
in respect of funds became ' so exceeding strait ' that they 
could not make proper deliveries 2 . This provoked the com- 
manders at sea to take the field against them, and Prince 
Rupert was so annoyed that he declared that he would never 
thrive at sea till some were hanged on land 3 ; and a little 
later expressed the opinion that the only way to deal with 
the Victuallers would be to send one of them on shipboard, 
there to stay in what condition his Majesty shall think fitting, 
till they have thoroughly victualled the fleet 4 . 

It is, on the whole, to the credit of the Victuallers that the 
complaints as to quality are not more numerous than they 
are during this period of large demands and scanty pay- 
ment. If you would care for illustrations, on 15 March, 167 1, 
on board the Reserve 'there was a general complaint amongst 
the seamen, both of the badness of the meat and want of 
weight.' 5 On 6 September, 1672, there was a protest from 
the Gloucester against the badness of the beer; but the Vic- 
tuallers replied rather ambiguously that their beer was as 
good as ever was used in the fleet, and they counted them- 
selves happy in that they had been afflicted with less bad 
beer 'by many degrees than ever was in such an action.' 6 
On 29 September the commander of the Augustine wrote 
to say that the doctor attributed the sickness among his 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 167 1-2, pp. 66, 498. 

2 lb. 1672, p. 484. For other references see pp. 31, 98, 106, 124, 453; and 
ib. 1673, p. 72. 

3 lb. 1673, p. xi. 

4 lb. 1673, p. 384. 

8 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, ccxcvii. 36. See also Calendar of State 
Papers, Domestic, 1671, p. 135. 

6 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, cccxxix. [I. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 61 

men to the extreme badness of the beer 1 ; while objection was 
also taken to an untimely dispensation of rotten cheese 2 . 

The victualling contract of which we possess the fullest 
details was that of 3 1 December, 1677 3 . From this it appears 
that the daily allowance of each man was ' one pound aver- 
dupois of good, clean, sweet, sound, well-bolted with a horse- 
cloth, well-baked, and well-conditioned wheaten biscuit; one 
gallon, wine measure, of beer '...'two pounds averdupois of 
beef, killed and made up with salt in England, of a well-fed 
ox... for Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays ' — or, 
instead of beef, for two of those days one pound averdupois 
of bacon, or salted English pork, of a well-fed hog... and a 
pint of pease (Winchester measure) therewith'...; 'and for 
Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, every man, besides 
the aforesaid allowance of bread and beer, to have by the 
day the eighth part of a full-sized North Sea cod of 24 inches 
long,ora sixth part of ahaberdine22 inches long, or a quarter 
part of the same sort if but 16 inches long. . .or a pound aver- 
dupois of well-savoured Poor John, together with two ounces 
of butter, and four ounces of Suffolk cheese, or two-thirds 
of that weight of Cheshire.' The contract provides for Eng- 
lish beef because there was a strong prejudice in the navy 
against Irish beef. Pepys quotes one writer as saying ' The 
Irish meat is very unwholesome, as well as lean, and rots 
our men ' 4 ; and John Hollond argues that to serve Irish beef 
was greatly to discourage the seamen 5 . ' Haberdine' is salt 
or sun-dried cod, and ' Poor John ' is salted or dried hake. 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1672, p. 668. 

2 lb. 1672, p. 675. An interesting discussion of victualling abuses is contained 
in a paper of 1673 or 1674, entitled The Expense and Charge of his Majesty's 
Naval Victuals considered and regulated, by Captain Stephen Pyend or Pine, 
who had been himself formerly a purser (Pepysian MSS., Miscellanies, iii. 723). 
The substance of it is printed in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 160-4. 

3 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 416. The contract is fully 
discussed in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 165-177. 

4 Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 146. 5 Discourses, ^>. 177. 



62 SAMUEL PEPYS 

In the case of vessels sailing ' to the southward of the 
latitude of 39 degrees N.' it was allowable for the contractors 
to vary the diet — ' In lieu of a pound of biscuit, a pound of 
rusk of equal fineness; in lieu of a gallon of beer, a wine 
quart of beverage wine or half a wine pint of brandy... in 
lieu of a piece of beef or pork with pease, three pounds of 
flour and a pound of raisins (not worse than Malaga), or in 
lieu of raisins, half a pound of currants or half a pound of 
beef suet pickled ; in lieu of a sized fish, four pounds of Milan 
rice or two stockfishes of at least 16 inches long; in lieu of 
a pound of butter or two pounds of Suffolk cheese, a wine 
pint of sweet olive oil.' The separate victualling contract for 
the Mediterranean 1 provided for this lighter diet there in 
any case ; but the variation was not popular among the sea- 
men. In Captain Boteler's Six Dialogues about Sea Services, 
printed in 1685 but written some fifty years earlier, the 
' admiral,' who, having just been appointed to the ' high- 
admiralship,' is occupied throughout the book in remedying 
an abysmal ignorance of naval matters by conversation with 
a ' sea-captain,' suggests that it would be better for the health 
of the mariners if the ordinary victualling were assimilated 
' to the manner of foreign parts.' ' Without doubt, my lord/ 
replies the captain, 'our much, and indeed excessive feeding 
upon these salt meats at sea cannot but procure much un- 
healthiness and infection, and is questionless one main cause 
that our English are so subject to calentures, scarbots, and 
the like contagious diseases above all other nations; so that 
it were to be wished that we did more conform ourselves, if 
not to the Spanish and Italian nations, who live most upon 
rice-meal, oatmeal, biscake, figs, olives, oil, and the like, yet 
at the least to our neighbours the Dutch, who content them- 
selves with a far less proportion of flesh and fish than we do, 
and instead thereof do make it up with pease, beans, wheat- 

1 Described in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 177. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 63 

flour, butter, cheese, and those white meats (as they are 
called).' To this view the admiral assents, but he adds, ' The 
difficulty consisteth in that the common seamen with us are 
so besotted on their beef and pork as they had rather ad- 
venture on all the calentures and scarbots in the world than 
to be weaned from their customary diet, or so much as to lose 
the least bit of it.' I should explain that a calenture is a fever, 
associated with delirium, to which sailors in the tropics were 
peculiarly liable ; and scarbot is the scurvy 1 . 

Pepys expected much from the new contract of 1677 2 , 
but the old complaints of delay and bad quality recur 3 , and 
in 1683 his successors decided to abandon contract in favour 
of a state victualling department resembling in its general 
character the system of victualling 'upon account,' 4 estab- 
lished from 1655 to the Restoration. If we may infer any- 
thing from the silence of the Admiralty Letters, hitherto so 
vocal upon the subject, this change of method resulted in an 
improvement in the victualling of the navy, and on the whole 
the Victualling Office did not come out badly under the test 
of the mobilisation of 1688. The necessity for this had been 
realised about the middle of August, and at first the delays 
caused a good deal of anxiety ; but by the end of October 
Pepys was able to report that the fleet is 'now (God be 
thanked) at the Gunfleet, and in very good condition there.' 5 

1 ' Calentures,' or burning fevers, were supposed to be bred by calms. Sir 
Walter Ralegh refers to his own sufferings from them {Remains, London, 
1664, p. 223). 

'Scarbot is probably from 'scharbock,' the Danish name for one form of 
scurvy (John Quincey, Lexicon Physico-medicum, London, 1787); the modern 
Danish term for scurvy is • skabet.' 2 See Admiralty Letters, vi. 228. 

3 Instances are given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 179-80. 

4 A discussion of the relative merits of the two systems occurs in Hollond, 
Discourses, p. 154. The substance of the patent of 10 December, 1683 (Naval 
Precedents, p. 48), which established the new department, is given in Catalogue 
of Pepysian MSS., pp. 180-2. 

5 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, xv. 250 (26 Oct). See also pp. 219-20, 
256-7, 284. 



64 SAMUEL PEPYS 

There were still ships waiting to be got ready for sea, but 
of these he writes : ' I do with the same zeal continue to 
press the despatch of the rest that are behind that I would 
do for my victuals if I were hungry.' 1 

One of the earlier acts of the Restoration Government 
was the passing of a statute to incorporate into the system 
of English law the ordinances already in force during the 
Interregnum for regulating the discipline of the navy. Before 
1652 such crimes as murder and manslaughter on board 
ship had been punishable by the ordinary law, and lesser 
offences by the 'known orders and customs of the seas' 2 ; 
but in that year the service was for the first time subjected 
to articles of war 3 , and it was upon these that the provisions 
of the Act of 1661 4 were founded. By this commanders at 
sea were empowered to try a great variety of offences by 
court-martial, and for many of these the maximum penalty 
was death, This Act continued to govern the navy until 
the reign of George II. 

Another Act, of 1664 5 , dealt with two matters which had 
given a great deal of trouble to the Navy Board — the fre- 
quent embezzlement of naval stores, and the riots among 
disappointed seamen who could not get their pay. Efforts 
had been already made to prevent embezzlement by adopt- 
ing special modes of manufacture for the King's rope, sails, 
and pennants, and by marking other stores with the broad 
arrow 6 ; but there were some things, such as nails and some 

1 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, xv. 241. 

2 See Pepysian MSS., No. 261 1, Penn's Collections, p. 95 : ' Instructions for 
the Admiralty, 1647.' These customs were not abrogated, either by the ordi- 
nances of the Interregnum or by the statutes of the Restoration. 

3 Oppenheim, p. 311. 

4 13 Car. II. c. 9. A summary of the pro%'isions of the Act is given in Cata- 
logue of Pepysian MSS., i. 184. 

5 16 Car. II. c. 5 ; renewed by 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 12. 

6 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1661-2, p. 152. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 65 

other kinds of ironwork, which could not be thus marked. 
Ironwork in particular was especially favoured by the depre- 
dators, because it could be so easily disposed of. In August, 
1663, an illicit storehouse discovered at Deptford for the 
reception of nails, iron shot, and other embezzled ironwork, 
was described as. the ' gulf that swallows up all from any 
place brought to him.' 1 The riots also had been a serious 
matter. The preamble of the Act gives as the ground of 
legislation ' diverse fightings, quarrellings, and disturbances 
...in and about his Majesty's offices, yards, and stores,' and 
' frequent differences and disorders ' which had occurred on 
pay-days through ' the unreasonable turbulency of seamen.' 
To meet this state of things the Act invests the Navy Board 
with some of the powers of magistrates, and authorises them 
to punish riots and embezzlements with fine and imprison- 
ment. 

The Act was useful, but it did not entirely stop embezzle- 
ment. In September, 1666, a prize worth £300 was plundered 
of her lading, and ' will soon,' we are told, ' be dismantled of 
all her rigging, till she will not have a rope's end left to hang 
herself, or the thievish seamen that go in her.' 2 Chatham 
Harbour had always been ' miserably infested ' with ' thieves 
and pilfering rogues,' 3 and in February, 1668, the clerk of 
the check wrote, ' our people's hands are of late so inured to 
stealing, that if the sawyers leave any work in the pits half 
cut, it's a hazard whether they find it in the morning.' 4 The 
state of things complained of was partly due to the uncer- 
tainty of pay. As far as the riots of seamen were concerned, 
the Act was a failure, as for their grievances force was no 



1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1663-4, P* 2 49- 

2 lb. 1666-7, p. 148. 

3 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, ccxvii. 138. 

4 lb. ccxxxv. 135. See also Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1668-9, 
PP- 171. 303; ib - l6 7i> PP- 523. 524' 

T. 5 



66 SAMUEL PEPYS 

remedy. Pepys writes on 4 November, 1665 \ when the Act 
of 1664 was in full operation, 'After .dinner I to the Office 
and there late, and much troubled to have a hundred seamen 
all the afternoon there, swearing below and cursing us, and 
breaking the glass windows, and swear they will pull the 
house down on Tuesday next. I sent word of this to Court, 
but nothing will help it but money and a rope.' 

The period of Pepys's first Secretaryship witnessed several 
attempts to effect an improvement in naval discipline. Abuses 
connected with the unlimited number of cabins built on the 
King's ships, leading to ' the pesteringof the ship,' ' contracting 
of sickness,' temptation to officers 'to neglect their duties and 
mis-spend their time in drinking and debauchery,' and ' the 
danger of fire,' led to the adoption, on 16 October, 1673, of 
a regular establishment of cabins for ships of each rate 2 . 

Another abuse of long standing had been the taking of 
merchants' goods in the King's ships. Sir Robert Slyngesbie 
had observed in his Discourse* in 1660 that this made it easy 
for the officers to sell the King's stores under the pretence 
that they were merchandise; to waste time in the ports 
which ought to have been spent at sea; and so to fill the 
ship's hold ' that they have no room to throw by their chests 
and other cumbersome things upon occasion of fight, whereby 
the gun decks are so encumbered that they cannot possibly 
make so good an opposition to an enemy as otherwise they 
might'; and, lastly, to defraud the custom-house. In 1674 
Pepys took the matter up, and induced the King to take 
severe notice of the offenders 4 , and in one particularly 

1 Diary. See also the entries for 19 October, 1666, and 25 June, 1667; and 
p. 45, supra. 

2 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, pp. 525-8. The establish- 
ment is printed in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 189-92. 

3 Hollond, Discourses, p. 353. Macaulay describes the abuse, but is silent 
concerning the attempts to remedy it (History of England, i. 148). 

4 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, iii. 367. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 67 

flagrant case of 1675 to offer the delinquent commander the 
alternative of imprisonment until trial by court-martial, or 
forfeiting the whole of his pay for the voyage, and ' making 
good to the poor of the Chest ' at Chatham out of his own 
purse the value of the freight of the merchants' goods brought 
home by him 1 . 

The absence of commanders from their ships without leave 
gave a good deal of trouble during the period 1673-9. On 
1 October, 1673, the Commissioners of the Admiralty ordered 
that the commanders should be ' pricked out of pay ' for such 
absences 2 ; but on 25 May, 1675, Pepys observes ' with much 
trouble ' that the ' late resolutions ' ' are already forgotten,' 
commanders ' appearing daily in the town ' without leave 3 . 
On 9 July he ' spied ' the captain of the Lark ' at a distance 
sauntering up and down Covent Garden, as I have too often 
heretofore observed him spending his time when the King's 
service required his attendance on shipboard, as it doth at 
this day — a practice which shall never pass my knowledge 
in any commander (be he who he will) without my taking 
notice of it to his Majesty and my Lords of the Admiralty.' 4 
Three years later complaints of this kind became very fre- 
quent, and so to the end of Pepys's first Secretaryship in 
1679. On 24 March, 1678, he writes: ' I must confess I have 
never observed so frequent and scandalous instances as I do 
at this day by commanders hovering daily about the Court 
and town, though without the least pretence for it.' 5 ' I would 
to God>he writes on 29 June to Sir Thomas Allin, 'you 
could offer me something that may be an effectual cure to 
the liberty taken by commanders of leaving their ships upon 
pretence of private occasions, and staying long in town, to 
the great dishonour of his Majesty's service, and corrupting 

1 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, iv. 233, 243, 246. 

2 lb. ii. 182. 3 lb. iv. no. 
4 lb. iv. 178. 6 lb. vi. 480. 



68 SAMUEL PEPYS 

the discipline of the Navy by their example... it seeming 
impossible as well as unreasonable to keep the door con- 
stantly barred against commanders' desires of coming to 
town upon just and pressing occasions of their families, and 
of the other hand no less hard upon the King that his gra- 
cious nature as well as his service should be always liable to 
be imposed upon by commanders, as often as their humours, 
pleasures, or (it may be) vices shall incline them to come 
ashore. Pray think of it and help me herein, for, as I shall 
never be guilty of withstanding any gentleman's just occa- 
sions and desires in this matter, so I shall never be able to 
sit still and silent under the scandalous liberties that I see 
every day taken by commanders of playing with his Ma- 
jesty's service, as if it were an indifferent matter whether 
they give any attendance on board their ships, so as they 
have their wages as if they did.' 1 

The official correspondence of 1673-9, although it reveals 
a grievous laxity of discipline 2 , exhibits Pepys himself in a 
favourable light. He had a high sense of the honour of the 
service, and shewed himself both firm and humane in his 
dealings with his official inferiors. He was at great pains to 
keep himself informed of the proceedings of the commanders, 
and when breaches of discipline were reported to him, he 
took infinite trouble to arrive at the facts. His admonitions 
to the offenders, though sometimes a little unctuous, are as 
a rule in the best Pepysian style. 

The decay of discipline in the Restoration period has 
been associated by some writers with the practice of appoint- 
ing ' gentlemen captains ' without experience to important 

1 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, vii. 296. 

2 Pepys, in a letter of 3 February, 1674, addressed to Captain Rooth, refers 
to 'the universal loss of discipline amongst the seamen of England,' 'a vice 
which I pray God grant I may see rectified before it prove too fatal, not only to 
his Majesty's service, but to the whole navigation of the country' [Admiralty 
Letters, iii. 78). 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 69 

commands at sea. The matter is discussed by Macaulay, 
picturesquely but with exaggeration 1 ; Pepys, in the Diary, 
quotes Coventry as referring to the 'unruliness' of the 
'young gentlemen captains ' 2 and confessing ' that the more 
of the cavaliers are put in, the less of discipline hath followed 
in the fleet ' 3 ; and a Restoration paper printed in Charnock's 
Marine Architecture* very much shocks that author by its 
'illiberal and improper observations' on the subject. He 
admits, however, that ' there certainly appears much truth 
and solidity in the general principle of them,' though ' it 
might have been wished for the sake of decency and pro- 
priety ' that the writer ' had conveyed his animadversions in 
somewhat less vulgar terms.' The victim of Charnock's 
criticism traces every kind of evil to the year 1660, when 
'gentlemen came to command in the navy.' These 'have 
had the honour to bring drinking, gaming, whoring, swearing, 
and all impiety into the navy, and banish all order and 
sobriety out of their ships ' ; they have cast their ships away 
for want of seamanship 5 ; they have habitually delayed in 
port when they should have been at sea ; a gentleman captain 
will bring ' near twenty landmen into the ship as his footmen, 
tailor, barber, fiddlers, decayed kindred, volunteer gentle- 
men or acquaintance, as companions,' and these 'are of 
Bishop Williams's opinion, that Providence made man to 
live ashore, and it is necessity that drives him to sea.' The 
writer concludes that ' the Crown will at all times be better 
able to secure trade, prevent the growth of the naval strength 
of our enemy, with £100,000 under a natural sea admiralty 
and seamen captains... than with three times that sum under 
land admirals and gentlemen captains not bred tarpaulins.' 

1 History of England, i. 147-9. 2 Dia7 7' 2 7 J ul y> l666 - 

3 Diary, 2 June, 1663. Cf. also 10 January, 20 October, 1666; 29 June, 1667. 

4 Vol. i. pp. lxxiv-xcv. 

6 Cf. Diary, 28 October, 1666. 



70 SAMUEL PEPYS 

With some qualifications this is the view of Pepys. He dis- 
claims hostility to gentlemen captains as such; but he quotes 
from a speech delivered by Colonel Birch in the House of 
Commons, in which he had urged that one of the ' present 
miscarriages ' of the navy is that ' employment and favour 
are now bestowed wholly upon gentlemen, to the great dis- 
couragement of tarpaulins of Wapping and Blackwall, from 
whence... the good commanders of old were all used to be 
chosen.' 1 Pepys also refers to the liberty taken by gentlemen 
commanders of ' thinking themselves above the necessity of 
obeying orders, and conforming themselves to the rules and 
discipline of the Navy, in reliance upon the protection secured 
to them therein through the quality of their friends at Court.' 2 
Pepys himself was probably an impartial witness, for he was 
denounced by each side for favouring the other 3 . 

It is in a way remarkable that during the period of com- 
plaints against gentlemen captains we come upon the first 
establishment of an examination for lieutenants. Towards 
the end of 1677 complaints reached the Admiralty from 
Sir John Narbrough, commanding in the Mediterranean, of 
the ' defectiveness ' of his lieutenants ' in their seamanship.' 4 
Pepys also refers to ' the general ignorance and dulness of 
our lieutenants of ships ' as ' a great evil ' of which ' all sober 
commanders at this day ' complain. They are ' for the most 
part (at least those of later standing) made out of volunteers, 
who having passed some time superficially at sea, and being 
related to families of interest at Court,do obtain lieutenancies 
before they are fitted for it.' 5 The result was the adoption 
on 18 December of a regular establishment 6 , drawn up by 

1 Letter to Sir John Holmes, 15 April, 1679 (Pepysian MSS., Admiralty 
Letters, ix. 206). 

2 Letter to the same, 18 April, 1679 (^- lx< 2I 4)- 

3 lb. ix. 242-3. 4 lb. vi. 231. 

Letter to Sir John Kempthorne, 1 December, 1677 (ib. vi. 264). 
6 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 241. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 71 

Pepys 1 , • for ascertaining the duty of a sea-lieutenant, and for 
examining persons pretending to that office.' A lieutenant 
was required to have served three years actually at sea; to 
be 20 years of age at least; to produce 'good certificates' 
from the commanders under whom he had served of his 
• sobriety, diligence, obedience to order,' and ' application to 
the study and practice of the art of navigation,' as well as 
three further certificates — from a member of the Navy Board 
who had served as a commander, from a flag officer, and from 
a commander of a first or second rate — ' upon a solemn ex- 
amination,' held at the Navy Office, of 'his ability to judge 
of and perform the duty of an able seaman and midshipman, 
and his having attained to a sufficient degree of knowledge 
in the theory of navigation capacitating him thereto.' Can- 
didates were sometimes ploughed 2 , and this, as Pepys points 
out, was an encouragement to the ' true-bred seaman ' and 
greatly to the benefit of the King's service. ' I thank 
God,' he writes in 1678 3 , 'we have not half the throng of 
those of the bastard breed pressing for employments which 
we heretofore used to be troubled with, they being conscious 
of their inability to pass this examination, and know it to 
be to no purpose now to solicit for employments till they 
have done it.' 

To about the same time as the examination for lieutenants 
belongs another minor reform — an establishment for the 
better provision of naval chaplains. In April or May, 1677, 
the King and Lords of the Admiralty resolved ' that no per- 
sons shall be entertained as chaplains on board his Majesty's 
ships but such as shall be approved of by the Lord Bishop 
of London.' 4 The proposal originated in the first instance 
with Pepys, who designed it to remedy ' the ill-effects of the 
looseness wherein that matter lay, with respect both to the 

1 Admiralty Letters, vi. 256. 2 lb. vii. 4. 

3 In a letter of 29 March, 1678 (ib. vii. 17). 4 lb. vi. 3. 



72 SAMUEL PEPYS 

honour of God Almighty and the preservation of sobriety 
and good discipline in his Majesty's fleet.' 1 The details of 
the scheme were more fully worked out by resolutions 
adopted by the Admiralty Commission on 15 December, 

1677 2 . 

An important measure which had an indirect bearing upon 
discipline was James II 's ' establishment about plate carriage 
and allowance for captains' tables,' 3 dated 1 5 July, 1686. The 
title of the establishment gives little indication of its real 
scope; it was designed to give the Admiralty a better con- 
trol over ships on foreign service, and at the same time so to 
improve the position of the commanders as to put them 
beyond the reach of temptations to neglect their public duty 
for private gain. The preamble refers to the ' general dis- 
order ' into which the discipline of the navy has ' of late 
years' fallen, and especially to the particular evil arising 
from ' the liberty taken by commanders of our ships (upon 
all opportunities of private profit) of converting the service 
of our said ships to their own use, and the total neglect of 
the public ends for which they, at our great charge, are set 
forth and maintained, namely, the annoying of our enemies, 
the protecting the estates of our trading subjects, and the 
support of our honour with foreign princes.' Commanders 
are accordingly forbidden to convey money, jewels, mer- 
chandise, or passengers without the King's warrant; and 
copies of orders given by admirals or commanders-in-chief 
are to be sent to the Secretary of the Admiralty, as also 
interim reports of proceedings, and a complete journal at 

1 Admiralty Letters, vi. 18, 45. See also vi. 19 and Naval Minutes, p. 81. 

2 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 161. The substance of 
these resolutions is given in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 206. See also there 
the new instructions of 20 October, 1685, for the guard-boats in Chatham and 
Portsmouth harbours (i. 208). 

3 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 245. Printed in Pepys's 
Memoires (Oxford reprint), pp. 55-68, 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 73 

the end of the voyage. In consideration of these require- 
ments, commanders are to receive substantial additional 
allowances ' for the support of their tables,' ranging from 
£83 a year to £250 according to the ship's rate. 

The reign of James II was in a peculiar degree a period 
of the framing and revising of 'establishments,' and on 
13 April, 1686, a new establishment was made concerning 
'volunteers and midshipmen extraordinary.' 1 This appears 
to be a confirmation of an earlier establishment of 4 May, 
1676, designed to afford encouragement ' to families of better 
quality. . .to breed up their younger sons to the art and prac- 
tice of navigation ' by ' the bearing several young gentlemen, 
to the ends aforesaid ' on board the King's ships as ' volun- 
teers,' and to provide employment for ex-commanders or 
lieutenants by carrying them as ' midshipmen extraordinary' 
over and above the ordinary complement assigned to the 
ship in which they sailed. Another ' establishment ' of the 
same period is that of November, 1686, for boatswains' and 
carpenters' sea stores 2 . 

During the earlier part of Pepys's second Secretaryship, 
drunkenness gave a good deal of trouble. For instance, in 
1685 the commander of the Diamond complained that his 
officers were ' sottish, and unfit to serve the King,' particu- 
larly the gunner, who was ' dead drunk in his cabin when the 
powder was to be taken out.' 3 Pepys refers on 5 August, 
1684, to 'the generality of that vice, now running through the 
whole navy,' 4 and on 4 February, 1685, he writes, ' Till that 
vice be cured, which I find too far spread in the navy, both 
by sea and land, I do despair of ever seeing his Majesty's 
service therein to thrive, and as I have given one or two 

1 Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 156. 

2 lb. p. 639. Both these establishments are more fully described in Catalogue 
of Pepysian MSS., pp. 213-16. 

3 Admiralty Letters, xi. 372. * lb. x. 89. 

5—5 



74 SAMUEL PEPYS 

instances of my care therein already, so shall I not fail by the 
grace of God to persevere in it, as far as I am able, till it be 
thoroughly cured, let it light where it will.' 1 In these efforts 
the Secretary of the Admiralty was soon to be powerfully 
supported by the new King, 'there being no one vice,' 
Pepys writes on 15 February, 1685, 'which can give more 
just occasion of offence to his Majesty than that of drunken- 
ness, for the restraining which, as well in the navy as in 
every other part of the service, I well know he has immove- 
ably determined to have the severest means used, nor shall 
I in my station fail (according to his commands and my 
duty) to give my helping hand thereto." 2 

In connexion with discipline it may be mentioned that 
even as early as the Restoration there were labour troubles 
in the dockyards. In 1663 a separate room was applied for in 
the new storehouse at Portsmouth for use as a workroom, 
'as seamen and carpenters will never agree to work together.' 3 
In the same year the clerk of the Portsmouth ropeyard com- 
plained of the workmen employed there. By hasty spinning 
they finished what they called a day's work by dinner-time, 
and then refused to work again till four o'clock. ' Yesterday,' 
he writes, ' about twenty-five of them left the work to go to 
the alehouse, where, I think, they remain.' 4 On 26 March, 
1664, the shipwrights and caulkers at Deptford are com- 
plained of because they work very slowly, and ' give ill 
language' when pressed to work 5 . Later on, in January, 
1 67 1, Commissioner John Cox appears to have had almost 
as much trouble with the master workmen and th,eir instru- 
ments in Chatham dockyard. They were remiss in their 



1 Admiralty Letters, x. 310. a lb. x. 331. 

3 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, lxix. 43. 

4 lb. lxxviii. 105. See also Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1663-4, 
pp. 244 and 276. 

5 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II, xcv. 147. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 75 

attendance, and met his efforts at their amendment by pas- 
sive resistance 1 . 

The two great shipbuilding years of our period were 1666 
and 1679 — the first accounted for by the Second Dutch 
War, and the latter by the Act of 1677 for thirty new ships 
to which I have already referred 2 . How much was done 
during the Restoration period to strengthen the navy on its 
material side can be realised by a comparison made in 
tabular form in Pepys's Register of Ships' 6 . In 1660 the navy 
consisted of 156 vessels, in 1688 of 173; but a comparison of 
numbers gives no adequate idea of relative strength. In 1660 
there were only 3 first rates as against 9 in 1688; second 
rates, 11 at both dates; third rates, 16 against 39; fourth 
rates, 45 against 41; fifth rates, 37 against 2; sixth rates, 
23 against 6 — shewing that the tendency had been to build 
bigger ships. In 1660 there were only 30 ships of the first 
three rates, but in 1688 the number was nearly doubled, 
rising to 59. Another feature in the table is the development 
of the fireship and the yacht 4 . In 1660 there were no fire- 
ships in the navy; in 1688, 26. In 1660 there was one yacht, 
and in 1688 there were 14. The strength of the fleet may also 
be tested in another way, by comparing tonnage, men, and 
guns 5 . In 1660 the tonnage was 62,594; in 1688, 101,032. 
In 1660 the number of men borne on the sea establishment 
was 19,551; in 1688,41,940. In 1660 the total number of 

guns was 4,642; in 1688, 6,954. 

/» 

1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1671, p. 44. 

2 p. 31, supra. A list of these ships is printed in Catalogue of Pepysian 
MSS., i. 223. 

3 lb. i. 304. The whole of Pepys's Register, with a number of illustrative 
tables, is printed there on pp. 253-306 ; as also his Register of Sea- Commission 
Officers on pp. 307-435. 

4 Another novelty of the period is the revival of the galley in the English 
navy. This is fully discussed in ib. i. 227-8. 

* Ib. i. 306. 



76 SAMUEL PEPYS 

In connexion with guns, the important achievement of 
the period was the systematising, under the methodical hand 
of Pepys, of the arrangements for determining the number 
and type of the armament of each rate, and the number of 
men required to work it. In 1677 he drew up a 'general 
establishment' of men and guns 1 , and this was officially 
adopted as ' a solemn, universal, and unalterable adjustment 
of the gunning and manning of the whole fleet 2 .' 

Let me now sum up briefly our general conclusions. 

In the light of the facts which I have endeavoured to set 
out in these lectures, the old notion that the naval adminis- 
tration of the Interregnum was pious and efficient and that 
of the Restoration immoral and slack appears crude and 
unsatisfying. But there is this element of truth in it — that 
vigorous efforts for the regeneration of the navy were to a 
certain extent rendered abortive by the corruption of the 
Court and the lowness of the prevailing political tone. Able 
and energetic reformers were baffled by want of money, and 
this was due partly to royal extravagance and partly to 
unsatisfactory relations with Parliament, which suspected 
peculation and waste. Discipline also was undermined by 
the introduction into the service of unfit persons, who ob- 
tained admission and were protected from the adequate 
punishment of their delinquencies by the interest of persons 
of quality at Court. Further, an atmosphere was created 
which enervated some of the reformers themselves. It is 
remarkable that in spite of these drawbacks so much should 
have been accomplished. The facts and figures contained in 
the naval manuscripts in the Pepysian Library go a long 

1 Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 61. 

2 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, vi. 201-2. This establishment is given 
in Pepysian MSS., No. 2867, Naval Precedents, p. 202, and the tables there 
given are printed and fully discussed in Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 234-42. 
See also pp. 242-4 for the reorganisation of the Office of the Ordnance in 1683. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 77 

way to justify the claims made by Pepys on behalf of the 
administrations with which he himself was connected, and 
particularly on behalf of the Special Commission of 1686, 
which, as he says, ' raised the Navy of England from the 
lowest state of impotence to the most advanced step towards 
a lasting and solid prosperity that (all circumstances con- 
sidered) this nation had ever seen it at.' 1 The characteristic 
vices of the Restoration, as he describes them, are all there — 
' the laziness of one, the private business or love of pleasure 
in another, want of method in a third, and zeal to the affair 
in most' — but except during the period 1679 to 1684 there 
was no abject incompetence and some steady progress. 
Even Charles II understood ' the business of the sea,' 2 ' pos- 
sessed a transcendent mastery in all maritime knowledge,' 3 
and when he was acting as Lord High Admiral transacted 
a good deal of naval business with his own hand 4 . James II 
was a real authority upon shipbuilding 5 , took an interest in 
the details of administration 6 , recognised the importance of 
discipline, and might have restored it if destiny had not inter- 
vened. But much more is to be attributed to the methodical 
industry of their great subordinate, and to his ' daily eye and 
hand ' upon all departments of naval affairs. His vitality of 
character and variety of interests appear in the Diary, but 
from his official correspondence we get something different ; 
for in a document which is so true to human nature as the 
Diary, it is almost inevitable that the diarist, although suffi- 
ciently.* self-satisfied, should be quite unconscious of his 
strongest points. We should expect business habits in a 
Government official, but in his correspondence Pepys ex- 

1 Memoires (Oxford reprint), p. 130. 

2 Pepysian MSS., No. 2866, Naval Minutes, p. 76. 

3 Derrick, Memoirs of the Royal Navy, p. 84. 

4 For instances of this see Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 246 nn. 

5 Pepysian MSS., Admiralty Letters, xi. 200; xii. 71, 91, 200; xiii. 23. 

6 Catalogue of Pepysian MSS., i. 247 n. 



78 SAMUEL PEPYS 

hibits a methodical devotion to business which is beyond 
praise. We have here sobriety and soundness of judgment; 
a sense of the paramount importance of discipline, and the 
exercise of a steady pressure upon others to restore it in the 
navy; a high standard of personal duty, which permits no 
slackness and spares no pains; and a remarkable capacity 
for tactful diplomacy. The decorous self-satisfaction of the 
Diary has been replaced in later years by professional pride; 
and an outlook upon business affairs which had always been 
intelligent, has become profoundly serious. The agreeable 
vices of the Diary suggest the light irresponsible cavalier. 
The official correspondence suggests that Pepys was a Puri- 
tan at heart, although without the Puritan rigidity o'f practice 
or narrowness of view. In his professional career he exhibits 
precisely those virtues which had made the naval adminis- 
tration of Blake's time a success — the virtues of the Inde- 
pendent colonels who manned the administrative offices 
during the First Dutch War. The change is that from the 
rather dissolute-looking young Royalist painted by Lely 
about 1669 to the ample wig and pursed official lips of the 
later portrait by Kneller 1 . 

It is not surprising that a man so observant, so experienced, 
and so absorbed in the navy should have drawn the moral 
of the naval history of his own time. In his Memoires of the 
Royal Navy* , the only work which he ever acknowledged 3 , 
Pepys states the essential ' truths ' of the ' sea ceconomy ' of 
England, which are as valid to-day as when he wrote them 
down — ' that integrity and general (but unpractised) know- 
ledge are not alone sufficient to conduct and support a Navy 

1 Both these portraits are at Magdalene College, the former in the Hall and 
the latter in the Library. 

2 Oxford reprint, p. 130. 

3 The Portugal History, or a Relation of the Troubles that happened in the 
Court of Portugal in the years 1667 and 1668. ..by S. P. esq. (1677) has also 
been attributed to him. 



AND THE ROYAL NAVY 79 

so as to prevent its declension into a state little less unhappy 
than the worst that can befall it under the want of both' ; 'that 
not much more (neither) is to be depended on even from 
experience alone and integrity, unaccompanied with vigour 
of application, assiduity, affection, strictness of discipline, 
and method '; but that what is really needed is ' a strenuous 
conjunction of all these.' For himself he claims due credit, 
for it was ' a strenuous conjunction of all these (and that 
conjunction only) ' that redeemed the navy in 1686. 

An anonymous admirer 1 wrote of Pepys as ' the great 
treasurer of naval and maritime knowledge,' who was ' aequi- 
ponderous ' to his colleagues ' in moral, and much superior 
in philosophical knowledge and the universal knowledge of 
the ceconomy of the navy.' Modern eulogies are phrased 
more simply, but we may fairly claim for this great public 
servant that he did more than anyone else under a King 
who hated 'the very sight or thoughts of business' 2 to apply 
business principles to naval administration. 

1 Letter to the Earl of Marlborough, by T. H., possibly Thomas Hayter, 
Pepys's clerk, who succeeded him in 1673 as Clerk of the Acts. 

2 Diary, 15 May, 1663. 



IND, 



Absence of commanders, 67 
Abuses in the navy, 5-10 
Administration, 18-36 
Admiralty commissions: 1659-60, 18; 

x 673-79» 3o; 1679-84, 32; special 

commission of 1686, 34, 48 
Aldeburgh, 49 
Algiers, 35 
Allin, Sir Thomas, comptroller of the 

navy 24, 67 
Anglesey, Earl of, treasurer of the 

navy, 2 - 

Bagw Mr, 46 

Barbei .geons, Company of, 39 

Barlow, Thomas, clerk of the acts, 
21 

Batten, Lady, 20 

Sir William, surveyor of the 

navy, 20, 24 

Berkeley, Lord, commissioner of the 
navy, 22 

Billingsgate, 45 

Birch, Colonel, 70 

Black Book of the Admiralty, 3 

Blackwall, 70 

Blake, Robert, 22, 23, 78 

Boatswains' stores, establishment for 
(1686), 73 

Boteler, Captain, 62 

Bowles, Phineas, secretary of the ad- 
miralty, 36 

Bristol, 39 

Brouncker, Lord, commissioner of the 
navy, 25, 33 

Cabins, establishment for (1673), 66 

'Calentures,' 62, 63 

Capel, Sir Henry, commissioner of 

the admiralty, 32 
Captains' tables, establishment for 

(1686), 72 
Carpenters' stores, establishment for 

(1686), 73 



Carteret, Sir George, treasurer of the 

navy, 19, 24 
Chaplains, establishment for(i677), 71 
Charles I, 19, 21 
- — II, 4, 18, 33, 43, 44, 54 ; his 
interest in the sea, rg, 31, 33, 77 
Chatham, 22, 45, 46, 49, 65, 72 n., 74 

Chest, 51, 67 

Civil War, 48 
Clerk of the Acts, 18 

Cocke, Captain, hemp contractor, 29 

Cockerell, Pepys, 11 

Coke, Lord Chief Justice, 16 

Commissions: of 1608, 5, 8; of 1618,5; 
of 1626, 5 ; for sick and wounded 
(1664 and 1672), 48, 49; for widows 
and orphans (1673), 49; see also 
Admiralty Commissions 

Commons, House of, 31, 70 

Commonwealth, 37, 48 

Comptroller of the Navy, 18 

Cordage, abuses in, 10 

Cottenham, Earl of, 1 1 

Covent Garden, 67 

Coventry, Sir William, commissioner 
of the navy, 13, 20, 25, 27, 55 «., 
69; his financial scheme (1667), 41 

Cox, John, 74 

Dartmouth, 49 

'Dead pays,' 7, 54 

Deal, 49 

Deane, Sir Anthony, commissioner 
of the navy, 31, 32; his appointment 
on the Special Commission of 1686, 
35, 36; his Doctrine of Naval Archi- 
tecture, 3 

Richard, 55 

Deptford, 22, 46, 65, 74 
Devonshire, 46 

Discipline of the navy, 64-75; Act of 

1661, 64 
Dockyards, troubles in, 45, 46, 74 
Dover, 49 



INDEX 



81 



Drunkenness in the nav) , 73 

Dugdale, Sir William, 1 

Dutch Wars: first, 40, 78; second, 
24, 27, 38, 40 «., 44, 48, 55, 58, 
75 ; third, 30, 42, 47, 49, 56, 60 

Edward VI, 22 

Embezzlement, Act against ^ 

Evelyn, John, 1, 3, 25; comutussic v.;r 

for sick and wounded (1664 and 

1672), 48, 49, 50 

Finance, 27, 37-56 

Finch, Daniel (afterwards Earl of Not- 
tingham), commissioner of the ad- 
miralty, 32 

Fireships, 75 

France, 43 

French Admiralty, report from, 34 

Galleys, 75 n. 

Gauden, Sir Denis, victualler of the 
navy, 29, 58, 59 

Gentlemen captains, 68 

Gosport, 49 

Gravesend, 49, 50 

'Gromets', 52 

Grove, Captain, 29 

Guardhoats at Chatham and Ports- 
mouth, instructions for (1685), 72 n. 

Gunfleet, 63 

Guns, 75; establishment for (1677), 76 

'Haberdine,' 61 

Half- pay, 56 

Harbour wages, 52 

Harwich, 41, 49 

Hawkyns, Sir John, 5 

Hayter, Thomas, clerk of the acts, 30, 

79 n - 
Hollond, John : his Discourses of the 

Navy, 4; Pepys's opinion of them, 5 
Hull, 45' 

Ipswich, 49 

Jamaica, 22, 

James I, 10, 28 

James, Duke of York (James II), 13, 
19 «•. 35. 43. 44. 59- 73' 775 ap- 
pointed lord high admiral (1660), 
18 ; his knowledge of naval affairs, 
19; his instructions of 1662, 26; 
resigned (1673), 30; went abroad 



(1679), 32; his own lord high ad- 
miral (1685) 34; withdraws from 
the kingdom (1688), 36 

Kent, 51 

Kneller's portrait of Pepys, 78 

Labour troubles in the dockyards, 74 

Lawrence, Mr, master shipwright at 
Woolwich, 36 

Lee, Sir Thomas, commissioner of the 
admiralty, 33 

Lely's poi ait of Pepys, 78 

Lieutenants, examination for ( 1 67 7) , 70 

London, 39, 45, 46, 49 
Bishop of, 14 «., 71 

Long Parliament, 48 

Lord High Admiral : Duke of York 
appointed (1660), 18; in the hands 
of the King and an admiralty com- 
mission (1673), 30; entirely in com- 
mission (1679), 3 2 5 T " tore d to 
Charles II (1684), 34, J gnes II 
(1685), 34; lord high ac i's in- 

structions (1662), 26 

Lord Treasurer, 36 

Lowestoft, 24 

Maidstone, 38 

Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 2 

Meadows, Sir Philip, 3 

Mediterranean, 70; victualling con- 
tract in, 62 

Mennes, Sir John, comptroller of the 
navy, 24, 45 

Merchants' goods in the King's ships, 
66 

Middleton, Colonel Thomas, com- 
missioner and surveyor of the navy, 

24. 45. 46, 58 
Midshipmen, establishments for (1676 

and 1686), 73 
Monck, George, 12, 23 
Monson, Sir William, 2, 5, 9, 24 
Myngs, Sir Christopher, 13, 14 

Narbrough, Sir John, 70 ; on special 

commission of 1686, 35 
Naval Discipline Act (1661), 64 
Naval stores, embezzlement of, 64 
Navy Board : in 1659, 18 ; in 1660, 22; 

in 1673,30; in 1679, 33; in 1688, 35; 

a body of experts, 18, 23, 27, 30, 

33 ; its functions, 26, 50 






82 



INDEX 



North Foreland, 13 ■ 

Northumberland, Earl of, 5 
Nottingham, Earl of; see Finch 

Orange, Prince of, 36 
Ordnance Office, 40, 76 n. 

Parliament, 76; vote of 1665, 40; of 
1666, 41 ; of 1677, 32 ; of 1678, 43 

Pay, rates of, 52 ; continuous pay for 
naval officers, $$; see also Wages 

Pearse, James, chirurgeon-general of 
the navy, 51 

Penn, Sir William, commissioner of 
the navy, 22, 25; his Naval Collec- 
tions, 1 

Pension Parliament, 31 

Pensions, 56 

Pepys, John, clerk of the acts, 30 

Mrs, 20 

Paulina, 1 1 

Pepys, Samuel: clerk of the acts 
(1660), 21; treasurer of Tangier 
commission (1665), 28; surveyor- 
general of victualling (1665), 28, 59; r 
secretary of the admiralty ( 1673), 30; 
his speech in Parliament (1677), 31; 
involved in the Popish Plot and 
resigned (1679), 32; second secre- 
taryship (1684), 34; deprived (1689), 
36. His projected history of the 
navy, 1, 2; pronunciation of his „ 
name, 1 1 ; the Diary, 1 1 ; his offi- 
cial style, 14; services to the navy, 
16, 77; question of his corruption, 
28; a disciplinarian, 66; his views 
on gentlemen captains, 70; on 
drunkenness in the navy, 73; a 
framer of 'establishments,' 70, 71 

Pepysian Library, 1, 49, 76 

Pett, Peter, commissioner of the navy, 
22, 38 
— — Phineas, 7 
Sir Phineas, 35 

Petty, Sir William, 4, 22 

Plate carriage, establishment for ( 1 686) , 
72 

Plymouth, 49 

'Poor John,' 61 

Popish Plot, 32 

Portsmouth, 5, 39, 44, 45, 46, 58, 
72 «., 74 

Principal Officers, 18, 35, 41; see also 
Navy Board 



Prisoners of war, care of, 49 

Public accounts, commission of, 41, 54 

Puritans, 37 

Pyend, Captain Stephen, 61 «. 

Riot, Act against (1664), 64 
Rochester, 50 
Royal Society, 4, 25 
Rump Parliament, 18 
Rupert, Prince, commissioner of the 
admiralty, 24, 30, 60 

Sandwich, Earl of, 21, 58 

Scurvy, 63 

Seymour, Sir Edward, commissioner 

of the navy, 26 
Shipbuilding, 75; Act of 1677, 31, 75 
Ships : 

Augustine, 60 

Centurion, 43 

Coventry, 58 

Diamond, 73 

Gloucester, 60 

James, 9 

Lark, 67 

Little Victory, 45 

Pearl, 45 

Reserve, 60 

Rupert, 43 

Swan, 43 
Shipwrights' Company, 3 
Shish, Jonas, 46 
Sick and wounded seamen, 48 
Slyngesbie, Sir Robert, comptroller of 

the navy, 20, 24; his Discourse of 

the Navy, 4 
Southampton, 49 
Southwell, Sir Robert, 4 
South wold, 49 

Special Commission of 1686, 34, 48 
Spithead, 47 n. 
Stratton, 22 
Surveyor of the Navy, 18 

Tangier, 28, 29 

Test Act (1673), 30 

Tickets, wages paid by, 7, 47, 53 

Tilbury Hope, 9 

Timber, abuses in, 10 

Tippetts, Sir John, commissioner and 

surveyor of the navy, 25, 35 
Tower, Pepys sent to the, 32 
Treasurer of the Navy, 18 
Treasury Chamber, 36 



•••> 



INDEX 83 

Trinity House, 3 Wapping, 70 

Turenne, 22 Warren, Sir William, timber con- 
tractor, 28 

Victualling, 57-64; abuses in, 5, 9; Warwick, Sir Philip, 40 

victualling 'upon account,' 10, 57, Watermen's Hall, 46, 47 

63; contract of 1677, 61; contract Weymouth, 49 

for the Mediterranean, 62 Wounded seamen, scale of relief 
Volunteers, establishments for (1676 for (1685), 51; see also Sick and 

and 1686), 73 Wounded 

Wages, abuses in, 6; tickets for, 7, Yachts, 75 
47- 53; 'dead pays,' 7, 54 Yarmouth, 49 



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